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From  the  collection  of  Mri.  Augustus  Saint-Gawk-n*. 

HOMER  SAINT-GAUD  ENS. 
By  John  S.  Sargent. 


AMERICAN  MASTERS  OF 
PAINTING 


BEING 

BRIEF   APPRECIATIONS   OF  SOME 
AMERICAN   PAINTERS 

ILLUSTRATED   WITH   EXAMPLES  OF 
THEIR  WORK 


BY 


CHARLES   H.   CAFFIN 


Garden  City       New  York 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1913 


146204 


Copyright,  1901,  1909,  by 
THE  SUN  PRINTING  AND  PUBLISHING  OCt 

Copyright,  190a,  by 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY. 


Art 
Library 

NX) 
2.36 
CU*. 

\9\3 


PUBLISHERS'   NOTE 

Thanks  are  especially  due  to  Colonel  Frank 
J.  Hecker  and  Mr.  Charles  L.  Freer  of  Detroit ; 
to  Mr.  George  A.  Hearn,  Mrs.  Augustus  Saint- 
Gaudens,  Mr.  Samuel  Untermeyer,  Mr.  William 
T.  Evans,  Mr.  Daniel  Guggenheim,  Mr.  Louis 
Marshall,  Miss  Henrietta  E.  Failing,  Mr.  White- 
law  Reid,  Mr.  James  W.  Ellsworth,  Mr.  J.  J. 
Albright,  Mr.  N.  E.  Montross,  the  Carnegie  In- 
stitute, and  the  Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts, — 
whose  assistance  has  made  possible  the  inclusion 
of  the  reproductions  in  this  illustrated  edition. 


Published  by  the  courtesy  of  The  New  Tork  Sun. 


CONTENTS 


I. 

George  Inness      .          .          . 

J" 

II. 

John  La  Farge      .          .          , 

19  • 

III. 

James  A.  McNeill  Whistler    , 

-       37  V 

IV. 

John  Singer  Sargent        .          , 

■       55  * 

V. 

Winslow  Homer .          .         , 

71  Ml 

VI. 

Edwin  A.  Abbey           . 

.        83. 

VII. 
VIII. 

George  Fuller       .         .         , 
Homer  D.  Martin         . 

,        IOI 

.    115 

IX. 

George  de  Forest  Brush 

.     129 

X. 

Alexander  H.  Wyant    . 

.   143 

XI. 

Dwight  W.  Tryon        . 

.   155 

XII. 

Horatio  Walker    .         . 

.    171  » 

Kill. 

Gilbert  Stuart       .         • 

.  185. 

tU 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING  FAGE 

HOMER  SAINT-GAUDENS.    By  John  S.  Sargent    Frontispiece 

THE  BERKSHIRE  HILLS.    By  George  Inness         .        .  4 

SUNSHINE  AND  CLOUDS.    By  George  Inness         .       .  5 

MIDSUMMER.    By  George  Inness J4 

ATHENS.    By  John  La  Farge 22 

Decorative  painting  in  the  Walker  Art  Gallery,  Bowdoin 
College. 

ALTAR  PIECE.    By  John  La  Farge 23 

Church  of  the  Ascension,  New  York. 

THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  SUN.    By  John  La  Farge    .        .  32 
Decoration  in  the  Church  of  the  Paulist  Fathers,  New  York. 

PORTRAIT  OF  THE  ARTIST'S  MOTHER.    By  James  A. 

McNeill  Whistler 42 

THE  MUSIC  ROOM.    By  James  A.  McNeill  Whistler    .  43 

NOCTURNE  — BOGNOR.    By  James  A.  McNeill  Whistler  46 

THE  BALCONY.    By  James  A.  McNeill  Whistler    .        .  47 

CARMENCITA.    By  John  S.  Sargent S6 

PORTRAIT  OF  MR.  MARQUAND.     By  John  S.  Sargent  57 

THE  LOOKOUT  — "ALL'S  WELL."    By  Winslow  Homer  72 

THE  WEST  WIND.    By  Winslow  Homer  ....  73 

ix 


x  LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING   PAGB 

THE  MAINE  COAST.    By  Winslow  Homer       ...      78 

THE  PENANCE  OF  ELEANOR,  DUCHESS  OF  GLOUCES- 
TER.   By  Edwin  A.  Abbey 86 

PAVANE.    By  Edwin  A.  Abbey 87 

Painted  in  1895  to  occupy  a  special  place  in  the  room  where 
it  now  is. 

THE  SIMPLE  GATHERER.    By  George  Fuller       .        .     106 

WESTCHESTER  HILLS.    By  Homer  D.  Martin       .       .120 

THE  SUN  WORSHIPPERS.    By  Homer  D.  Martin  .        .121 

OLD  CHURCH  IN  NORMANDY.    By  Homer  D.  Martin     124 

THE  SCULPTOR  AND  THE  KING.    By  George  de  Forest 

Brush 136 

MOTHER  AND  CHILD.    By  George  de  Forest  Brush    .  137 

THE  MOHAWK  VALLEY.    By  Alexander  H.  Wyant     .  i46 

THE  CONNECTICUT  VALLEY.    By  Alexander  H.  Wyant  u7 

MOONLIGHT  AND  FROST.    By  Alexander  H.  Wyant  .  iSO 

SPRING  BLOSSOMS.    By  Dwight  W.  Tryon      ...  160 

EARLY  SPRING,  NEW  ENGLAND.    By  Dwight  W.  Tryon  ^i 

EVENING  — AUTUMN.    By  Dwight  W.  Tryon  ...  166 

A  STY.    By  Horatio  Walker        .        .       .       .       .       '174 

PLOUGHING  IN  ACADIA.    By  Horatio  Walker     .       .  I7S 


I 

GEORGE    INNESS 


GEORGE   INNESS 

IN  the  record  of  American  art  three  names 
stand  out  distinctly  as  those  of  innovators : 
Whistler,  La  Farge,  and  George  Inness.  While 
Whistler's  influence  has  been  felt  throughout  the 
whole  art  world,  and  La  Farge  (to  quote  from  the 
Report  of  the  International  Jury  of  the  Exhibition 
of  1889)  "has  created  in  all  its  details  an  art  un- 
known before,"  Inness  was  a  pathfinder,  only 
within  the  domain  of  American  art,  and  was  led 
by  instinct  into  ways  already  trodden  by  the  great 
men  of  other  countries.  But  this  does  not  make 
him  less  an  innovator.  Nor  does  the  fact  that  he 
was  certainly  influenced  by  "  the  men  of  1 830," 
when  he  came  to  know  their  works.  The  point 
is  that  throughout  his  life  his  evolution  was  from 
within. 

His  father,  a  retired  New  York  grocer,  would 
have  had  him  enter  business,  and  even  opened  a 
small  store  for  him  in  Newark,  N.J.,  whither  the 
family  had  moved  from  Newburg.  But  the  son's 
mind  was  set  on  art.     Like  Durand,  Kensett,  and 


4  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

Casilear,  he  was  apprenticed  for  a  short  time  to  an 
engraver,  and  subsequently  studied  painting  for  a 
little  while  with  Regis  Gignoux,  a  pupil  of  Dela' 
roche.  For  the  rest  he  was  self-taught.  His 
contemporary,  Frederick  E.  Church,  younger  than 
himself  by  a  year,  was  seeking  instruction  from 
Thomas  Cole,  the  founder  of  the  "  Hudson  River 
School,"  whose  grand  topographical  landscapes 
the  pupil  was  to  follow  in  his  studies  of  the  Andes, 
of  Niagara,  and  of  other  impressive  regions.  The 
young  Inness,  meanwhile,  was  independently 
studying  the  individual  forms  of  nature.  That 
he  should  be  insensible  to  the  influence  of  Cole 
was  out  of  the  question,  and  so  late  as  1865,  when 
he  was  forty  years  old,  and  had  returned  from  his 
first  visit  to  Europe  deeply  impressed  with  the 
work  of  the  Barbizon  painters,  we  can  detect  in 
at  least  two  pictures,  "  Delaware  Valley"  and  the 
large  "  Peace  and  Plenty  "  of  the  Metropolitan 
Museum,  that  fondness  for  grandeur  of  distance 
and  extent  so  characteristic  of  Cole.  But  we  can 
also  detect  the  expression  of  a  fuller  intimacy  with 
the  scene  than  Cole  could  give.  Inness's  own 
penetrating  study  of  natural  phenomena,  indorsed 
for  himself,  no  doubt,  by  the  corresponding  aim 
of  the  Barbizon  painters  to  reach  the  inwardness 
of  the  landscape,  had  enabled  him  more  thor- 
oughly to  comprehend  the  vastness ;   to  collate 


GEORGE   INNESS  5 

the  details  and  render  them  subordinate  to  a 
single  powerful  impression.  The  conception  and 
progress  of  each  of  those  pictures  is  from  the  gen- 
eral to  the  particular,  and  not  contrariwise,  as  in 
the  topographical  landscape  ;  and  this  contrary  has 
impressed  upon  them  a  distinct  personal  feeling ; 
the  realization  in  each  case  of  a  mood  of  nature, 
powerfully  felt. 

But  in  alluding  to  the  topographical  character 
of  Cole's  landscapes,  I  am  very  far  from  wishing 
to  belittle  the  essential  greatness  of  that  painter. 
While  his  means  of  expression  were  comparatively 
inadequate,  while  he  may  even  have  mistaken  the 
true  province  of  landscape  painting,  his  conception 
of  nature  was  unquestionably  an  exalted  one,  and 
likely  to  be  acceptable  to  a  spirit  so  eagerly  aspiring 
as  Inness's.  Moreover  —  and  this  is  often  over- 
looked —  it  was  the  natural  result  of  the  time  and 
environment.  To  a  young  people,  with  its  grow- 
ing consciousness  of  free  and  independent  nation- 
ality, surrounded  by  the  vastness  of  nature  as 
yet  scarcely  altered  by  man,  what  could  have 
been  more  attractive  than  this  sense  of  nature's 
grandeur?  In  their  attitude  toward  the  nature 
around  them  they  may  have  been  nearer  to  the 
truth  than  we  give  them  credit  for.  We  must 
not  forget  that  our  estimate  of  the  functions  of 
landscape  painting  comes  to  us  from  Holland,  a 


6  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

country  oflimited  horizons,  through  France,  whose 
soil  is  highly  cultivated  and  studded  with  the 
charming  intimacy  of  rural  life.  Finding  this 
paysage  intime  true  to  nature  and  intrinsically 
lovely,  while  the  so-called  classic  landscape  was 
grandiloquently  superficial,  we  have  assumed  that 
the  former  is  the  true  and  only  satisfactory 
representative  of  pictorial  landscape.  Perhaps 
too  rashly ;  for  even  as  painting  has  been  able  to 
compass  the  solemnities  of  religion,  so  a  painter 
may  arise  who  will  join  to  technical  ability  suffi- 
cient force  of  mind  to  compass  the  solemnities  of 
nature.  Meanwhile,  we  should  at  least  remember 
that  Cole  drew  his  inspiration  from  American 
scenery,  which  the  modern  painter  is  studying 
through  spectacles  borrowed  from  France  and 
Holland. 

Where  Inness  showed  himself  superior  to  the 
American  painters  of  his  early  life  was  in  the  com- 
prehensive control  which  he  exercised  over  his  view 
of  nature ;  a  control  assisted  by  his  close  study 
of  nature's  forms,  and  of  their  relative  signifi- 
cances. He  was,  in  fact,  the  father  of  the  natural- 
istic movement  in  American  landscape ;  for  it 
seems  clear  that  he  fully  realized  the  trend  of  his 
studies  before  he  had  found  them  indorsed  by  the 
Barbizon  painters.  And  this  separate  and  inde- 
pendent offshoot  of  the    naturalistic    movement, 


GEORGE   INNESS  7 

appearing  almost  simultaneously  in  the  New 
World,  is  a  very  curious  and  interesting  problem. 
In  the  case  of  the  Barbizon  painters  the  logic  of 
the  movement  can  be  readily  traced :  in  the  gen- 
eral dissatisfaction  with  classicism ;  in  the  imme- 
diate influence  of  Constable  and  the  tradition  of 
the  Dutch ;  and,  finally,  in  a  sort  of  compromise 
between  the  realism  of  Courbet  and  the  poetic 
rage  of  the  Romanticists.  But  that,  unprompted 
by  outside  suggestion,  a  yearning  for  nature  study 
and  for  a  poetic  interpretation  of  landscape  should 
have  arisen  at  about  the  same  time  in  a  young  man 
on  the  banks  of  the  American  Hudson,  points  to 
that  wider  logic  which  thinkers  have  detected  in 
the  evolution  of  man  —  that  the  identical  phases 
of  evolution  may  appear  sporadically,  independent 
of  transmitted  causes,  the  individual  man  or  nation 
having  reached  a  period  of  personal  development 
at  which  the  next  step  becomes  inevitable. 

Inness  was  of  religious  temperament;  highly 
imaginative  and  at  the  same  time  questioning,  ar- 
gumentative, as  befitted  his  Scotch  origin.  Apply- 
ing these  qualities  to  his  art,  he  was  unremitting 
in  the  investigation  of  truth,  while  regarding  nature 
in  a  spirit  of  elevated  poetry.  For  he  seems  to 
have  had  always  an  alert  consciousness  of  the  si- 
multaneous claims  of  the  spirit  and  of  the  senses. 
He  found  an  interdependence  between  the  two. 


8  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

External  beauty  was  the  expression  of  an  inward 
beauty  of  spirit.  In  this  way  landscape  painting 
to  some  orders  of  mind  becomes  veritably  a  form 
of  religious  painting.  It  would  seem  to  have  been 
so  to  Inness,  as,  in  his  way,  it  was  to  Corot.  It 
was  with  the  latter  of  all  the  Barbizon  pairters 
that  Inness  appears  to  have  had  most  sympathy, 
though  he  was  appreciative  also  of  Rousseau  and 
Daubigny. 

A  man  may  be  gauged  to  some  extent  by  the 
company  he  chooses,  and  Inness's  predilection  for 
these  three  may  afford  additional  evidence  of  his 
own  personal  feeling  toward  his  art.  Toward 
Rousseau  he  was  attracted,  no  doubt,  by  the  mas- 
ter's magnificent  sincerity,  the  tireless  analysis  that 
resulted  in  such  a  comprehension  of  nature's  forms, 
within  which  he,  too,  felt  the  existence  of  a  spirit- 
uality that  led  him  in  time  to  nature-worship, 
into  a  sort  of  vague  pantheism.  This  spiritual 
"underlay"  in  Rousseau's  work  must  have  been 
very  fascinating  to  Inness,  while  its  concentrated 
intensity  would  strike  a  sympathetic  chord  in  his 
own  ardent  temperament.  Not,  however,  so  as 
to  lead  him  in  the  direction  of  Rousseau's  stern- 
ness. His  sympathies  were  more  akin  to  the 
tender  spirituality  of  Corot.  He  missed  in  the  lat- 
ter's  work  the  mastery  of  tangible  form  and  found 
his  range  of  colour  narrow,  but  was  charmed  with 


GEORGE   INNESS  9 

the  exquisite  serenity,  childlike  freshness  of  soul, 
and  perpetually  gracious  bonhommie  of  Corot's  man- 
ner,—  all  qualities  that  one  associates  with  the 
classic  style,  and  that  make  the  introduction  of 
nymphs  into  his  naturalistic  landscapes  seem 
altogether  reasonable. 

And  in  this  predilection  for  Corot  there  is  in- 
terest, since  we  are  accustomed  to  hear  Inness  called 
"an  impetuous  and  passionate  painter."  Yet  in 
his  work  there  is  very  little  of  stress  and  storm. 
We  remember  him  most  affectionately,  and  seem 
to  find  him  most  characteristically  represented  in 
works  of  such  benign  repose  as  "Winter  Morn- 
ing, Montclair,"  "The  Wood  Gatherers,"  "The 
Clouded  Sun,"  and  "  Summer  Silence."  I  do  not 
forget  that  many  of  his  earlier  pictures  could  be 
described  as  passionate;  but  their  turbulence  of 
emotion  is  seldom  associated  with  any  disturbance 
in  nature.  The  turbulence  is  in  the  manner  of 
feeling  and  painting  rather  than  in  the  subject,  in 
the  interpretation,  for  example,  of  a  flaming  sunset 
sky  over  an  earth  sinking  peacefully  to  slumber. 
The  passion  is  in  the  painter  himself;  and,  as  he 
matured,  ardour  yielded  to  intensity,  to  the  white 
heat  of  concentrated  energy.  The  progress  of  his 
art  was  steadily  in  the  direction  of  serenity,  that 
highest  quality  of  calm  which  is  the  flux  of  passion. 

Here  again  becomes  evident  the  essentially  re- 


io  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

ligious  character  of  his  art  and  its  point  of  contact 
with  the  religiosity  of  Rousseau  and  Corot;  Rous- 
seau's attained  through  suffering,  Corot's  preserv- 
ing to  the  end  the  naive,  painless  faith  of  the  child. 
Inness  would  be  drawn  to  one  by  sympathy,  to 
the  other  by  wonder  and  love.  Whence,  then,  his 
admiration  of  Daubigny?  The  latter  had  little 
intensity  and  less  spirituality;  an  easy  man,  the 
lockers  of  whose  houseboat  contained  good  crea- 
ture comforts.  He  makes  you  realize  the  smile  of 
the  earth,  and  limits  his  poetry  to  the  quiet  com- 
fortableness of  the  inhabited  and  cultivated  banks 
of  his  beloved  rivers.  Partly  it  was  the  perennial 
boyishness  of  Daubigny 's  heart  that,  no  doubt, 
captivated  Inness.  His  own  soul  was  quick  and 
eager  to  the  end,  undimmed  or  worsted  up  to  close 
on  seventy  years,  and  its  sweet  freshness  was  a  tri- 
umph over  the  debilitating  effects  of  frail  health, 
unremitting  toil,  and  protracted  struggle.  So  the 
genial,  simple  lovableness  of  Daubigny's  character 
may  well  have  brought  him  encouragement  and 
refreshment.  But  we  may  suspect  another  link 
of  fascination.  While  Rousseau  and  Corot  were 
painters  of  nature,  Daubigny  was  the  painter  of 
the  country,  of  the  landscape  in  its  intimate  re- 
lation to  the  life  of  man.  It  is  not  that  he  intro- 
duces figures,  for  he  seldom  does,  yet  the  spirit  of 
mankind  broods  over  almost  all  his  landscapes; 


GEORGE   INNESS  n 

and  the  normal  progress  of  all  of  us  in  our  love  of 
nature  is  apt  to  be  from  wonderland  to  the  land  of 
intimate  affection.  A  child  will  be  attracted  by  a 
gorgeous  sunset,  and  we  most  of  us  begin  by  ad- 
miring nature's  grandeur,  nor  are  disinclined  to 
lose  ourselves  in  her  infinity.  But  later  comes  the 
more  seeing  eye,  which  finds  infinite  suggestion  in 
little  things  and  a  suggestion,  also,  of  infinity,  if 
the  mind  craves  for  it.  And  then  comes,  too,  a 
craving  to  be  personally  something  in  the  midst 
of  this  infinity,  to  attach  one's  self  to  one's  sur- 
roundings and  share  in  the  common  life ;  so  more 
and  more  we  grow  to  value  those  aspects  of  nature 
which  recall  our  intimate  relation  to  her,  and  the 
simple  landscape  of  the  countryside  is  found  to  be 
most  companionable.  As  soon  as  his  circumstances 
permitted,  Inness  established  himself  in  a  country 
home  at  Montclair,  N.J.,  and  thenceforth  the 
simple  charms  of  his  surroundings  afford  him  all 
the  inspiration  that  he  needs. 

To  us  as  well  as  to  himself  this  is  the  most 
beautiful  period  of  his  art,  representing  the  matur- 
ity both  of  his  method  and  ideal.  Years  of  study 
and  experiment  have  given  his  hand  assurance 
and  facility.  It  obeys  the  brain  implicitly  and 
with  a  readiness  that  does  not  put  any  drag  upon 
the  full,  free  play  of  the  imagination.  Its  ideog- 
raphy  is  entirely  personal,  the  brush  work  having 


n  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

been  refined  until  in  the  most  succinct  and  preg- 
nant way  it  expresses  precisely  its  author's  point 
of  view.  So  personal  is  it  that  one  may  with 
equal  certainty  deduce  the  point  of  view  from 
the  method  or  trace  back  the  method  to  the  point 
of  view.  Ampleness  and  simplicity  are  the  char- 
acteristics of  each.  The  ampleness,  however,  is 
no  longer  of  space  but  of  significance  ;  the  vision, 
instead  of  being  long-sighted,  has  become  more 
penetrating  and  embracing ;  the  artist  is  more 
thoroughly  possessed  of  his  subject.  So,  too, 
the  simplicity  involves  no  meagreness  of  thought, 
but  a  thought  fully  realized  and  clarified  of  every- 
thing that  might  detract  from  or  confuse  its 
meaning,  having  also  a  large  suggestiveness,  an 
expression  of  the  artist's  imagination  which  in- 
vites the  exercise  of  ours.  At  least  such  is  the 
character  of  the  brush  work  in  his  best  pictures, 
for  there  are  others  in  which  the  expanses  of 
slightly  broken  colour,  enlivened  only  by  a  few 
accents,  are  inclined  to  be  a  little  uninteresting ; 
succinct,  in  fact,  without  being  also  pregnant  of 
meaning.  If,  however,  they  seem  to  be  slight 
and  sketchy,  it  is  not  because  they  were  done 
without  heart  or  care,  but  because  Inness  was 
constantly  experimenting  in  the  direction  of  more 
complete  synthesis,  wherein  form  for  its  own  sake 
is  less  and  less  insisted  on,  and  the  great  motive 


GEORGE  INNESS  13 

aimed  at  is  the  character  of  the  scene,  and  the 
spirituality  which  it  embodies  —  a  motive,  in  fact, 
of  interpretive  impressionism. 

In  view  of  Inness's  impressionistic  tendency 
that  is  a  curious  statement  which  has  been  credited 
to  him,  "  While  pre-Raphaelism  is  like  a  meas- 
ure worm  trying  to  compass  the  infinite  circum- 
ference, impressionism  is  the  sloth  enveloped  in 
its  own  eternal  dulness."  If  the  remark  was 
really  made  by  him,  it  proves  that  he  could  be 
intolerant  of  others  without  trying  to  understand 
their  motives.  Both  movements  are  naturalistic, 
and  for  that  reason  alone,  if  for  no  other,  Inness 
might  have  tried  to  understand  them ;  pre- 
Raphaelism,  moreover,  added  to  its  devotion  to 
the  truth  of  form  a  profound  spirituality,  with 
which  quality,  at  least,  he  should  have  felt  some 
sympathy.  Its  motive,  moreover,  was  in  a  meas- 
ure humble.  It  certainly  never  tried  to  "  com- 
pass the  infinite  circumference  "  ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  limited  itself  to  fragments  and  exaggerated  their 
importance,  pictorially  speaking,  in  the  general 
scheme.  Even  more  misjudged  is  the  application 
of  a  sloth  to  the  analytical  refinement  and  inde- 
fatigable study  of  the  most  eminent  impressionists. 
It  could  not  have  been  their  search  for  the  fugi- 
tive effects  in  nature  or  for  the  precise  character 
of  some  phase  of  nature  at  a  certain    time    that 


i4  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

annoyed  Inness,  perhaps  hardly  the  secondary 
place  that  they  sometimes  give  to  form.  More 
likely  it  was  their  choice  of  a  subject  without  due 
reference  to  the  accepted  conventions  of  pictorial 
composition  and,  I  suspect,  still  more  to  their 
disregard  of  that  other  pictorial  convention,  tone. 
I  am  using  the  word  "  tone"  to  express  the  preva- 
lence of  some  one  colour  in  a  picture  to  which 
all  other  hues  are  subordinated,  and  not  in 
that  other  use  of  the  word  which  involves  the 
setting  of  all  objects,  lights,  and  colours  in  a  pic- 
ture in  due  relation  to  one  another,  within  an 
enveloppe  of  atmosphere.  We  have  become  in- 
clined to  regard  "  tonality  "  as  a  fetich,  forgetting 
that  it  is  after  all  only  one  of  many  admirable 
pictorial  conventions,  which,  like  other  pictorial 
conventions,  has  no  absolutely  true  counterpart 
in  nature.  No  one  can  affirm  conclusively  that 
any  one  convention  has  a  prescriptive  superiority 
over  all  others.  It  is  a  matter  to  be  adjusted  by 
the  temperament  of  the  individual.  In  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  Hudson  we  have  days  when  the 
atmosphere  is  extraordinarily  brilliant  and  the 
light  clear  white.  I  cannot  recall  any  adequate 
expression  of  this  in  Inness's  pictures.  He  was 
drawn  rather  to  early  mornings,  to  evenings,  to 
quiet  afternoons,  or  the  golden  glow  of  summer 
and  autumn,  when  the  atmosphere  is    caressing. 


From  tlic  collection  of  Junies  W.  Ellsworth,  Esq. 


MIDSUMMER. 
By  George  Inness. 


GEORGE   INNESS  15 

Such  moods,  perhaps,  contributed  to  him  more 
suggestion  of  spirituality  and  were  more  in  har- 
mony with  the  mysticism  of  his  mind. 

Not  only  had  he  the  faculty  of  seizing  the 
character  of  a  scene  and  of  portraying  it  in  terms 
of  eloquent  suggestiveness,  but  he  gave  it  the 
impress  of  his  own  fine  way  of  seeing  it.  We 
remember  the  effect  produced  by  viewing  a  large 
number  of  his  pictures  together,  as  at  the  Clarke 
and  Evans's  sales.  What  a  remarkable  distinction 
pervaded  the  group  !  Not  only  was  the  manner 
that  of  a  master,  but  of  one  whose  accomplished 
technique  was  at  the  services  of  a  high  order  of 
mind,  evidencing,  if  one  may  say  so,  the  gentle- 
man's way  of  approaching  the  mistress  of  his 
heart.  His  sentiment  in  no  instance  that  I  can 
recall  sinks  into  sentimentality.  It  grew  out  of 
a  devotion  to  nature  which  was  deep  enough  to 
merge  the  personal  feeling  in  an  intense  and 
active  sensibility  to  the  impression  of  the  scene 
itself.  So  that,  without  any  posture  of  mind  or 
even,  perhaps,  any  set  purpose,  he  is  poetical. 
Had  his  medium  been  words,  he  would  have  been 
nearer  to  Wordsworth  than  to  Tennyson ;  satis- 
fied to  interpret  nature  rather  than  to  use  her  for 
the  setting  of  some  thought  of  his  own.  In 
this  way  he  was  much  nearer  to  Rousseau  and 
Daubigny  than  to  Corot. 


II 

JOHN    LA   FARGE 


II 

JOHN   LA   FARGE 

JOHN  LA  FARGE  has  given  us  two  avenues 
of  approach  to  his  personality  as  an  artist : 
one  through  his  pictures,  drawings,  and  decora- 
tions, the  other  through  his  writings.  In  the 
drama  of  his  artistic  doings  the  writings  serve  as 
the  chorus,  which  from  its  platform  in  front  of 
the  actual  stage  interpolates  a  commentary  on  the 
main  action,  in  language  always  illuminative, 
though  sometimes  of  rather  complex  meaning. 
For  it  reflects,  in  fact,  the  complexity  of  its 
author's  personality,  his  life-long  habit  of  contem- 
plation and  the  wide  horizon  over  which  his  study 
has  roamed,  embracing  many  objects  of  desire  in- 
side and  outside  his  art,  to  none  of  which  he  can 
tolerate  a  short  cut,  but  the  interdependence  of 
which  and  the  relative  interest  of  the  paths  thereto, 
even  the  inevitable  oppositions  and  compromises,  he 
has  always  realized  and  valued.  As  Paul  Bourget 
happily  says,  La  Farge's  "  least  words  betray  the 
seeker  of  a  kind  like  Fromentin,  who  thinks  out 
his  sensations  —  a  rare,  a  very  rare  power." 

19 


20  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

He  was  a  student  of  art  long  before  he  entered 
upon  it  as  a  profession.  It  attracted  him  first  as 
a  form  of  culture,  the  practice  coming  later;  quite 
an  inversion  of  the  usual  progress  of  the  art  stu- 
dent, who  gets  manual  facility  and  then  culture  — 
sometimes.  Nor  did  art  in  his  early  days  present 
the  only  form  of  culture.  He  received  a  classical 
training  of  the  thorough  sort  that  promotes  an 
intimacy  with  classic  thought  and  expression.  His 
father's  house  in  Washington  Square,  well  stocked 
with  books  and  pictures,  was  the  rendezvous  of 
cultivated  people,  many  of  them  tmigrts  of  the 
French  Revolution  or  refugees  from  St.  Domingo. 
When  he  visited  Europe  in  1856  he  stayed  in 
Paris  at  the  home  of  his  relatives,  the  St.  Victors, 
where  lived  his  bedridden  great-uncle,  author  of 
many  works,  historical,  critical,  and  artistic,  who 
had  known  friends  and  foes  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, had  been  an  imigri  in  Russia  and  still 
retained  his  interest  in  all  things,  even  to  the 
theatres.  Paul  de  St.  Victor,  writer  and  critic, 
was  La  Farge's  cousin,  and  many  remarkable  and 
gifted  people  came  to  the  house,  —  Russians,  mem- 
bers of  the  Institute,  priests,  art  critics,  and  literary 
men,  among  them  Charles  Blanc  and  Theophile 
Gautier. 

La  Farge  had  been  taught  to  draw  in  a  precise, 
old-fashioned  way  by  his  grandfather,  Binsse  de 


JOHN   LA   FARGE  21 

St.  Victor,  a  miniature  painter  of  some  talent,  and 
during  his  visit  to  Europe  he  was  advised  by  his 
father  to  study  painting  under  some  master,  partly 
as  an  accomplishment,  partly  as  an  escape  from  a 
desultory  interest  in  many  things.  He,  therefore, 
entered  the  studio  of  Couture,  who,  however,  rec- 
ommended him  to  postpone  painting  and  to  study 
and  copy  the  drawings  of  the  old  masters  in  the 
Louvre.  "  With  quite  a  comprehension  of  my 
inevitable  failure,"  he  says,  "  I  made  drawings 
from  Correggio,  Leonardo,  and  others ;  but  my 
greatest  fascination  was  Rembrandt  in  his  etch- 
ings." Later  he  followed  the  drawings  of  the  old 
masters  in  Munich  and  Dresden,  giving  up  an 
invitation  to  accompany  Paul  de  St.  Victor  and 
Charles  Blanc  in  a  tour  of  northern  Italy.  "  I 
have  never  known,"  he  writes,  "  whether  I  did 
well  or  ill,  for  I  cannot  tell  what  the  effect  upon 
me  might  have  been  of  the  inevitable  impression 
of  the  great  Italian  paintings,  seen  in  their  own 
light  and  their  native  place."  He  means  at  that 
period  of  his  development,  for  he  saw  them  later. 
Next  he  made  a  short  stay  in  England  and  became 
acquainted  with  the  works  of  the  pre-Raphaelites, 
who  did  not  seem  disconnected  from  the  charm 
of  Sir  Joshua  and  Gainsborough,  or  from  the 
glories  of  Turner,  "  which  yet  offended  by  its 
contradiction  of  the  urbanity  and  sincerity  of  the 


22  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

great  masters  whom  I  cared  for  most."  But  the 
willingness  of  the  pre-Raphaelites  to  meet  many 
great  problems  of  colour  attracted  him  and  con- 
firmed him  in  the  direction  of  his  own  study  of 
colour.  However,  the  most  important  European 
developments  of  that  time  seemed  to  him  to  be 
represented  by  Rousseau,  Corot,  Millet,  and  Dela- 
croix. On  his  return  to  New  York  he  entered  a 
lawyer's  office,  for,  as  he  says, "  no  one  has  strug- 
gled more  against  his  destiny  than  I ;  nor  did  I  for 
many  years  acquiesce  in  being  a  painter,  though  I 
learned  the  methods  and  studied  the  problems  of 
my  art.  I  had  hoped  to  find  some  other  mode 
of  life,  some  other  way  of  satisfying  the  desire  for 
a  contemplation  of  truth,  unbiassed,  free,  and  de- 
tached." His  friendship  with  William  Hunt  may 
have  decided  him  in  his  career,  or  his  marriage  in 
i860,  which  established  him  in  Newport,  R.I. 

This  brief  summary  represents  quite  a  remark- 
able method  of  evolution  for  an  artist ;  one  that 
could  not  be  adopted  with  impunity  by  many 
young  men,  its  very  leisureliness  offering  tempta- 
tions, of  which  the  least  evil  result  might  be  dil- 
ettanteism.  But  La  Farge  was  freed  from  the 
danger  by  the  possession  of  moral  and  mental 
stamina,  the  breadth  of  his  sympathies  even  de- 
manding this  gradual  development.  Nor  was  it 
unaccompanied  with  strenuousness  of  interest  in 


JOHN   LA  FARGE  23 

the  various  phases  of  culture,  of  which  art  began 
by  being  one  and  grew  to  be  the  most  absorbing. 

It  was  significant  that  this  dreamer  should  be 
attracted  especially  by  the  nature  students  among 
the  living  painters.  That  was  indicative  of  the 
depth  and  sincerity  of  his  contemplations.  But 
it  is  still  more  significant  that  from  the  start  he 
should  have  commenced  a  critical  study  of  the 
problems  of  colour;  this  proved  the  independence 
of  his  sincerity.  Another  point  of  great  signifi- 
cance, as  affecting  his  subsequent  career,  is  that, 
although  he  afterward  made  a  close  study  of 
anatomy,  in  his  apprentice  days  he  seems  to  have 
drawn  from  drawings  rather  than  from  the  living 
model,  studying,  in  fact,  the  abstract  made  by 
others  instead  of  the  concrete  directly  studied  by 
himself.  Thus  the  habit  of  his  mind  was  directed 
toward  the  generalization  and  significance  of  the 
figure  rather  than  to  its  anatomical  facts.  This 
made  him  very  early  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of 
Japanese  art,  and  has  proved  at  once  the  strength 
and  weakness  of  his  subsequent  treatment  of  the 
figure. 

It  is  frequently  asserted  that  his  drawing  is  not 
always  correct,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
schools  he  would  probably  himself  plead  guilty 
to  the  charge.  But  those  who  insist  upon  the 
point  do  not  perhaps  quite  comprehend  his  motive, 


24  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

which  is  less  the  actual  structure  of  the  form  than 
the  inherent  significance  of  the  figure.  Let  us 
grant  at  once  that  the  two  motives  are  not  antag- 
onistic, that  Millet's  "  Sower,"  for  example,  is  as 
structurally  correct  as  it  is  full  of  significance. 
But  that  is  to  put  La  Farge  to  the  test  of  one  of 
the  greatest  masters  of  drawing,  by  comparison 
with  whom  very  few  can  stand.  By  far  the  great- 
est number  of  draughtsmen,  while  approaching 
him  in  correctness,  will  be  far  behind  him  in 
expression.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  case  of 
La  Farge,  the  significance  of  a  pose  or  gesture, 
the  vital  expression  of  a  figure,  is  generally  admi- 
rable. I  have  in  mind,  for  example,  his  drawing  of 
Bishop  Hatto,  pursued  by  rats.  The  distance  from 
the  thigh  to  the  toes  would  appear  to  be  exag- 
gerated ;  but  how  wonderfully  the  long  drawn  out, 
tense  arc  of  the  figure  stimulates  the  imagination 
to  a  realization  of  the  agony  of  the  crisis.  There 
is  another  point.  The  figure,  as  it  is,  so  exactly 
contributes  to  the  decorative  balance  of  the  pic- 
ture. It  may  be  that  the  instinct  of  the  decorator 
determined  the  length  of  limb,  and  perhaps  also, 
not  at  all  improbably,  the  influence  of  the  Japa- 
nese. It  would  not  be  difficult,  for  instance,  to 
find  in  Outamaro's  lovely  prints  of  women  just 
such  an  elongation  to  accentuate  the  svelte  grace 
with  which  he  wishes  to  invest  them. 


JOHN   LA   FARGE  25 

I  make  this  suggestion  with  more  confidence, 
because  one  can  trace  in  the  composition  of  this 
picture  more  than  a  little  of  the  Japanese  arrange- 
ment of  full  and  empty  spaces ;  that  irregular 
form  of  composition  which  secures  a  balance  by 
oppositions  rather  than  by  repetition  of  similari- 
ties. It  is,  indeed,  the  method  of  the  nature 
student,  as  true  of  Velasquez  and  Rembrandt 
as  of  the  Japanese.  Not  that  La  Farge  with 
his  choice  appreciation  of  the  old  masters  could 
be  insensible  to  the  influence  of  the  Italians. 
His  great  altarpiece  of  the  Ascension  in  the 
Church  of  the  Ascension  in  New  York  is  remi- 
niscent in  its  structure  of  Raphael's  "  Disputa." 
The  space  is  very  similar  in  shape,  and  filled  with 
a  broad  band  of  figures  across  the  base,  a  central 
figure  in  the  upper  space,  and  flanking  arcs  of 
angels.  Again  the  mural  paintings  of  "  Music  " 
and  the  "Drama"  in  the  music  room  of  Mr. 
Whitelaw  Reid's  New  York  house  were  evidently 
suggested  by  the  pastoral  scenes  of  the  Venetian 
painters.  The  latter,  however,  were  themselves, 
no  doubt,  suggested  by  the  desire  to  emancipate 
painting  from  the  rigidity  of  preconceived  formulas 
of  composition,  and  it  is  just  this  attempt  to  dis- 
cover a  compromise  between  the  natural  and  the 
conventional  which  is  so  marked  a  characteristic 
of  La  Farge's  treatment  of  mural  painting. 


26  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

It  may  have  been  an  early  feeling  after  this  that 
at  least  helped  to  draw  him  toward  Rembrandt, 
especially  toward  his  religious  subjects.  I  find 
more  than  a  little  of  the  latter' s  influence  in  the 
mural  paintings  in  the  churches  of  St.  Thomas 
and  of  the  Incarnation  in  New  York,  particularly 
in  the  solemn,  serious  naturalism  of  the  grouping  ; 
in  the  humble  devotion  with  which  the  spirit  of 
the  occasion  has  been  comprehended,  and  in  the 
significance  of  gesture  and  expression,  but  espe- 
cially of  gesture,  through  which  this  spirit  has  been 
embodied.  A  boy's  freshness  of  faith,  dignified 
by  a  man's  realization  of  its  import  —  a  quality 
very  rare  at  any  period,  and  quite  likely  to  be 
overlooked  in  this  one.  It  is  the  outcome  of 
a  religious  temperament  —  a  thing  very  different 
from  the  religious  habit  —  born  of  a  capacity  to 
feel  deeply  the  significance  of  things,  .  *\d  by 
instinct  and  culture  fitted  to  see  the  beauty 
inherent  in  the  significance,  whether  it  be  the 
significance  of  the  spiritual  or  of  the  material 
life  or  of  the  subtle  analogy  between  the  two. 
When  the  painter  can  comprehend  this  and  set 
it  down  on  the  threshold  of  every-day  experience, 
in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  intimate  without  being 
commonplace,  its  human  meaning  neither  lessen- 
ing, nor  lost  in,  the  splendour  of  its  expression,  we 
may  reasonably  call  him  great. 


JOHN   LA   FARGE  27 

And  no  one  denies  to  La  Farge  a  splendour 
of  expression.  He  is  that  rara  avis  among 
artists,  who  not  only  sees  the  world  as  a  pag- 
eant of  coloured  light,  but  has  found  means  to 
express  his  visions.  His  inherited  instinct  for 
colour  has  been  assiduously  cultivated  by  obser- 
vation and  scientific  study,  the  researches  of 
Professor  Root  of  Columbia  University  having 
been  enthusiastically  followed  and  adapted  by 
him  to  his  practical  requirements.  When  cir- 
cumstances brought  to  him  the  opportunity  of 
executing  windows,  immediately  came  into  play 
his  extensive  memories,  his  dreams  of  possibili- 
ties, and,  equally,  his  independence  of  conven- 
tionalized methods.  Finding  that  he  could  not 
reach  adequate  results  in  the  material  available, 
and  realizing  the  weakness  of  existing  methods, 
he  experimented  until  he  discovered  the  adapta- 
bilities of  opaline  glass,  which  has  a  suggestion 
of  complementary  colours,  "  a  mysterious  quality 
of  showing  a  golden  yellow,  associated  with  violet, 
a  pink  flush  on  a  ground  of  green."  Moreover, 
by  the  infinite  variety  of  modulations,  which  its 
making  admits,  it  allows  a  degree  of  light  and 
shade  in  each  piece  of  glass,  which  not  only 
gives  modelling,  but  increases  the  depth  of  tone, 
sufficient  at  places  to  make  the  darker  parts  melt 
softly  into  the  harsh  lead-line.     This  invention 


28  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

by  John  La  Farge  of  the  applicability  of  opaline 
glass  to  the  making  of  coloured  windows  has  put 
a  wide  range  of  means  in  the  hands  of  the  artist, 
not  only  in  the  general  richness  and  equally  pos- 
sible delicacy  of  effect,  but  in  the  increased  sub- 
tlety attainable  through  complementary  effects  and 
effects  of  opposition ;  the  material  including  all 
kinds  of  variety  in  the  texture,  quality,  thickness, 
and  even  pattern  of  the  glass,  and  also  almost 
every  variation  of  density  and  transparence.  It 
is  a  palette  of  extraordinary  range,  perilously  ser- 
viceable in  the  hands  of  an  ambitious  person  of 
meagre  knowledge  and  feeling,  quite  susceptive 
of  commonplace  exploitation  in  those  of  the 
ordinary  designer.  But  in  the  hands  of  a  true 
artist,  who  thinks  in  colour,  and  has  a  store  of 
gathered  observations  backed  with  scientific  assur- 
ance, it  permits  the  fullest  scope  to  his  imagina- 
tion, and  the  opportunity  of  realizing  the  most 
diverse  and  complex  schemes  of  colour,  allowing 
him  to  reproduce  much  of  the  mystery  that  time 
has  wrought  into  the  mediaeval  stained  glass,  and 
to  add  to  the  latter' s  chantlike  simplicity  of 
colour  and  structure  the  complicated  harmonies 
of  modern  music.  It  is  an  art,  indeed,  that 
brings  the  decorator  within  measurable  distance 
of  the  musical  composer. 

The  new  intent  of  this  glass  and  the  subsequent 


JOHN   LA   FARGE  29 

developments  which  have  made  of  it  a  new  fabric 
were  so  much  the  outcome  of  La  Farge's  personal 
need  of  expression  that  it  is  not  surprising  he  has 
reached  results  superior  to  Jiose  of  others  who 
employ  the  same  medium.  A  reason  which  also 
contributes  to  his  superiority  is  that  his  conception 
from  the  start  formulates  itself  in  colour,  whereas 
the  genesis  of  most  windows  would  appear  to  be  in 
the  lineal  design,  clothed  in  colour  afterward.  In 
other  words,  like  every  true  craftsman,  La  Farge 
thinks  in  his  material.  The  effect  of  this  has  been, 
at  least,  twofold.  In  the  first  place,  there  has 
always  been  a  reciprocity  of  influence  between  his 
imagination  and  his  material ;  while  he  has  been 
big  enough  to  anticipate  the  possibilities,  he  has 
been  big  enough  also  to  accept  the  limitations 
of  the  medium.  In  the  second  place,  —  and  this 
really  follows  from  the  former, —  he  has  preserved 
an  independence  in  the  character  of  the  design, 
neither  attempting  to  reproduce  that  of  the  old 
cathedral  windows,  nor  dipping,  except  occasion- 
ally, into  that  universal  cook-book  of  the  aver- 
age designer,  the  ornament  of  the  Renaissance. 
With  a  larger  sense  of  fitness  he  found,  if  any- 
where, a  prototype  for  his  motives  in  Eastern  art, 
not  only  in  the  mosaics  of  Byzantium,  but  in  the 
jewelled  inlays,  lacquers,  textiles,  and  cloisonnt  of 
Japan.     Particularly  is  this  true  of  the  windows 


3° 


AMERICAN   MASTERS 


of  pure  decoration  which  he  has  executed  for  pri- 
vate houses  and  again  of  those  superb  windows 
in  the  west  end  of  Trinity  Church  in  Boston.  In 
these  a  cultivated  taste  will  be  disposed  to  feel 
that  the  splendour  and  mystery  of  the  fabric  are 
most  abundantly  manifested.  It  is  pure  decoration 
of  the  most  subtle  and  resplendent  kind. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  soon  as  the  figure  is 
introduced,  particularly  when  the  figure  must  sub- 
serve a  religious  sentiment,  a  compromise  has  to 
be  effected  between  the  abstract  decoration  and 
the  concrete  form,  between  the  conventional  and 
the  naturalistic.  And  the  inevitable  antagonism 
between  the  two  has  become  more  difficult  to 
reconcile  in  these  days,  both  for  the  artist  and  for 
ourselves  who  enjoy  his  work,  because  we  are  no 
longer  satisfied  with  the  simple  abstractions  of  the 
human  form,  which  sufficed  for  the  childlike  faith 
and  narrower  experience  of  ancient  peoples.  In 
all  his  figure  windows,  therefore,  it  is  most  inter- 
esting to  study  how  he  has  eschewed  the  pictorial 
motive,  which  unfortunately  the  immature  taste  of 
the  public  so  persistently  demands,  and  to  which, 
either  on  compulsion  or  because  he  knows  no  bet- 
ter, the  average  designer  inclines.  La  Farge,  on 
the  contrary,  while  frankly  admitting  the  claims  or 
the  necessity  of  naturalistic  treatment,  endeavours, 
as  far  as  possible,  to  find  some  modern  form  of 


JOHN   LA   FARGE  31 

abstraction  for  the  figure,  and  to  offset  it  with  a 
freer  abstraction  or  conventionalization  in  the  rest 
of  his  composition ;  so  that  while  the  significance 
of  the  figure,  its  form  and  sentiment,  is  not 
swamped,  there  yet  survives  the  impression  that 
the  window  is  not  a  picture  in  glass,  but  an  ele- 
vated decoration  of  transparent  and  translucent 
mosaic,  inlaid  in  a  cloisonn'e  of  ornamental  lead- 
lines. 

In  a  brief  appreciation  of  this  artist's  work  it  is 
natural  to  d./ell  upon  him  in  his  capacity  of  a 
master  decorator,  for  the  whole  trend  of  his  activi- 
ties, at  first,  perhaps,  unconsciously,  later  with  a 
purpose  continually  strengthened  and  expanded, 
has  been  in  this  direction.  And  he  has  proved 
himself  a  master  not  only  within  the  restricted 
field  of  American  art,  but  in  comparison  with  the 
master  decorators  of  Europe. 

I  have  spoken  of  La  Farge's  writings  being  a 
commentary  upon  his  artistic  acts.  Often  it  is  in 
a  man's  lighter  moments  that  he  makes  clear  to 
us  the  workings  of  his  mind,  and  La  Farge  has 
done  so  in  the  journal  which  he  wrote  during  a 
vacation  in  the  South  Sea  Islands.  It  is  the  spon- 
taneous utterance  of  a  scholar,  at  once  a  dreamer 
and  an  analyst ;  of  an  artist,  also,  who  sees  pic- 
tures everywhere ;  and  its  word-painting  and 
many-faceted  allusiveness  to  all  kinds  of  memo- 


32  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

ries,  derived  from  art  and  life  and  literature,  render 
these  impressions  of  new  scenes,  which  still  retain 
some  flavour  of  the  antique  world,  unique  in  their 
exquisite  beauty  and  suggestiveness.  Let  me 
quote  one  passage  :  "  From  the  intricate  tangle  of 
green  we  saw  the  amethyst  sea  and  the  white  line 
of  sounding  surf,  cutting  through  the  sloping 
pillars  of  the  cocoanuts  that  made  a  mall  along 
the  shore ;  and  over  on  the  other  side  of  the  nar- 
row harbour  the  great  high  green  wall  of  the 
mountain,  warm  in  the  sun,  its  fringe  of  cocoa- 
nut  groves  and  the  few  huts  hidden  within  it 
softened  below  by  the  haze  blown  up  from  the 
breakers.  All  made  a  picture  not  too  large  to  be 
taken  in  at  a  glance."  Nor  yet  too  distant.  The 
harbour,  observe,  is  narrow  and  bounded  by  a 
high  green  wall  of  mountain.  The  picture  was 
not  shaping  itself  to  him  as  it  might  have  done  to 
the  eyes  of  a  pure  landscapist,  but  in  a  compara- 
tively flat  pattern,  as  of  a  wall  or  window  decora- 
tion. He  sees  it  with  the  instinct  of  a  decorator 
and  with  his  own  personal  predilections ;  for  he 
dwells  upon  the  combination  of  green  and  blue, 
which  any  student  of  his  work  may  feel  to  have 
particular  fascination  for  him.  He  notes  in  one 
part  the  tangle  of  green,  its  suggestive  subtlety  of 
pattern  and  tone ;  in  another,  where  the  huts  are 
half  hidden,  the  welcome  spot  of  density ;  again, 


THE    ANGEL  OF   THE  SUN. 
Decoration  in  ihe  Church  of  the  Paulist  Fathers.  New  York. 

By  John  La  Faroe. 


Copyright  by  John  La  F»Tgc. 


JOHN   LA   FARGE  33 

the  value  of  mystery  in  the  haze ;  and  finally  he 
correlates  the  beauties  of  contrasted  forms  and 
spaces  and  the  varying  brilliance  and  softness  of 
the  coloured  light.  As  I  said,  it  is  a  decorator's 
vision,  and  the  same  in  their  different  degrees  of 
sketchiness  is  revealed  in  the  water-colour  draw- 
ings made  at  the  same  time.  They  are  so  many 
notes  and  records  of  a  mind  perpetually  intent  on 
decorative  problems. 

Recently  he  wrote  a  short  but  exceedingly  sug- 
gestive appreciation  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  sug- 
gestive most  of  all  because  of  its  conscious  and 
unconscious  implication  of  his  own  experience  and 
desires  with  those  of  a  brother  master  in  decora- 
tion. In  their  moral  and  mental  elevation  there 
is  much  affinity  between  the  two  men :  Puvis,  a 
Burgundian  by  birth,  by  education  a  Lyonnais, 
simultaneously,  therefore,  romantic  and  logical ; 
La  Farge,  of  French  descent  with  romantic  and 
adventurous  associations,  yet  influenced  by  the 
vital  practicalness  of  American  environment. 
Both  have  sought  to  reconcile  their  respect  for 
tradition  with  their  interest  in  the  living  present ; 
and  to  recognize  the  limitations  imposed  both  by 
their  medium  and  by  their  own  individual  per- 
sonality, disciplining  themselves  to  accept  the 
inevitable  and  to  carry  their  personal  develop- 
ment to  its  farthest  possibility.     Its  manifestations 


34  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

in  each  case  are  widely  different:  the  robust 
Puvis  detaching  himself  more  and  more  from  the 
material  and  tending  to  an  extreme  of  spiritual 
refinement ;  the  frailer  physique  of  La  Farge 
reaching  out  farther  and  farther  toward  the  inter- 
pretation of  spirit  by  means  of  material  splendour. 
The  differences  were  personal  and  local ;  but  in 
the  quality  of  their  minds  and  their  attitude 
toward  art  there  is  an  unquestionable  affinity  be- 
tween these  two  preeminent  master  decorators. 

If  I  read  La  Farge's  art  aright,  it  is  the  product 
of  a  wide  and  penetrating  vision,  simplified  by 
selection  ;  the  theme  is  then  comprehended  in  its 
vital  significance,  and  all  the  force  of  his  imagina- 
tion is  assembled  to  embroider  it  with  a  web  of 
elaborate  orchestration. 


Ill 

JAMES  A.  McNEILL  whistler 


Ill 

JAMES  A.  McNEILL  whistler 

WE  are  already  far  enough  away  from  the 
middle  of  the  last  century  to  gain  a  fair 
perspective  of  it.  In  matters  of  belief  and  feeling, 
it  was  a  period  of  little  faith  and  less  initiative. 
Men  moved  forward  with  their  faces  turned  back- 
ward,—  in  the  religious  world,  seeking  ideals  in 
medievalism  ;  in  art,  also,  borrowing  their  motives 
from  the  past.  It  was  a  time  of  rediscovery,  of 
revivals ;  less  of  new  birth  or  growth  than  of  new 
assimilations.  Velasquez,  for  example,  was  found 
to  exist ;  so,  also,  Rembrandt ;  and  Caucasian  civ- 
ilization became  conscious  of  an  Oriental  art  from 
farther  round  the  globe  than  the  Levant  or  even 
India.  Japan  was  discovered.  To-day  these 
three  names  represent  potent  influences  in  art. 
A  few  years  ago  their  significance  was  not  appre- 
ciated beyond  the  studios  ;  still  a  few  years  farther 
back,  and  scarcely  even  there.  It  was  Whistler's 
discernment  that  early  recognized  their  worth ; 
his  genius  that  utilized  the  significance  so  uniquely. 
How  he  did  it  is  characteristic    of  himself,  but 

37 


146204 


38  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

equally  of  the  modernity  of  which  he  is  so  con- 
summate a  representative. 

And  what  of  this  modernity  ?  Intrinsically  it 
is  not  a  new  thing,  though  taking  on  some  special 
colour  from  its  particular  time  of  reappearance, 
being  indeed  a  culture  of  manners  rather  than  of 
convictions.  It  is  analytical,  for  it  is  part  of,  or 
compelled  by,  the  contemporary  scientific  move- 
ment; it  is  intolerant  of  restraint,  except  such  as 
it  chooses  for  itself;  is  callous  when  not  person- 
ally interested,  and  finds  its  interest  in  subtleties ; 
its  faith  is  self-found  and  felt  to  be  honoured  by 
the  discovery ;  in  scope  not  so  much  broad  and 
embracing  as  diffused  and  discriminating;  for 
depth,  it  substitutes  a  carefulness  about  many 
things,  and  for  sincerity  a  nice  tactfulness.  It  is 
polished,  dainty  in  taste  and  manners,  seeking  the 
essence  of  life  in  its  most  varified  appeal  to  the 
senses,  even  sometimes  in  abnormal  depravity. 
It  is,  in  fact,  the  very  antithesis  of  brawn  and 
muscle,  of  hard  and  wholesome  thinking,  of  the 
bourgeoisie  and  Philistinism,  through  which  a  com- 
fortable world  is  provided  for  modernity  to  bask 
in,  either  as  a  rarely  delicate  exotic  or  a  upas  tree. 

While  Whistler  as  a  man,  in  his  attitude 
toward  the  world,  has  been  the  Beau  Brummel  of 
this  nineteenth-century  modernity,  he  has  kept 
his  art   in  a  beautiful   isolation,  selecting   for   it 


JAMES   A.   McNEILL   WHISTLER        39 

only  the  choicest  contributions  of  the  spirit  of  the 
age  and  impressing  upon  them  the  fine  distinction 
of  his  unique  personality.  Thus,  while  some  of 
his  contemporaries  in  the  search  for  new  sensations 
pushed  their  analysis  into  the  gutter,  his  work  has 
been  invariably  fragrant  and  pure.  He  has  been 
a  consistent  apostle  of  beauty,  of  the  sane  and 
normal  type  of  it.  I  do  not  mean  beauty  as  it  is 
commonly  understood,  for  he  has  had  his  very  per- 
sonal ideas  and  his  own  modes  of  reaching  them ; 
but  that  the  source  in  which  he  has  always  looked 
for  them  has  been  sane  and  normal ;  so  that,  amid 
the  craving  for  new  sensations  and  for  new  forms 
of  expression,  by  which,  like  others,  he  has  been 
affected,  and  with  a  taste  also  for  notoriety  and 
for  shocking  the  vulgar,  he  has  never  in  his  art 
deviated  from  the  sweet  and  wholesome.  Nor 
has  he  lived  without  a  strong  faith.  He  has  be- 
lieved in  himself  without  reservation,  and  just  as 
absolutely  in  his  art  as  he  has  formulated  it. 
There  is  one  god,  and  Whistler  is  its  prophet ;  a 
creed  narrow  and  intolerant,  but  abundantly  justi- 
fied, if  you  accept  his  god,  which,  again,  is 
Whistler  —  the  spiritual  ego  within  him  to  which 
all  his  life  he  has  tried  to  give  an  adequate 
expression. 

For  his  faith  at  root  is  a  very  simple  one :  the 
love    of  beauty  and  the  expression  of  it;    only 


4o  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

beauty  with  him  is  one  of  essence  and  significance, 
quite  removed  from  any  literary  allusiveness,  and 
as  far  as  possible  expressed  by  means  which  are 
solely  the  products  of  brush  or  etching  needle, 
sensation  and  method  approximating  as  much 
as  may  be  to  the  exclusively  abstract  ones  of 
music.  He  cannot  escape  the  concrete  altogether 
and  must  often  use  as  vehicles  of  expression 
things  to  which  the  dictionary  assigns  terms,  and 
to  which  the  association  of  memory  and  ideas  has 
given  a  verbal  significance.  But  even  in  using 
these  he  feels  such  significance  extraneous,  and 
subordinates  it  as  far  as  possible  to  the  special 
aesthetic  significance  of  the  pictorial  art.  It  is 
the  meaning  that  these  things  have  for  the  artist's 
peculiar  vision  that  he  tries  to  keep  free  from 
other  allusion  —  abstract.  It  is  not  the  object 
before  him  for  the  time  being  that  is  worth  his 
consideration,  but  the  enjoyment  of  the  purely 
aesthetic  impression  of  it  aroused  in  his  own  mind, 
of  which  he  seeks  to  express  the  essence  in  his 
picture.  It  is  a  theory  of  art  all  but  too  subtle 
for  human  nature's  daily  food;  in  a  world  in 
which  we  are  continually  confusing  cause  and 
effect,  the  object  with  the  subject,  the  source  of 
our  enjoyment  with  the  enjoyment  itself;  a  theory 
quite  intolerable  when  exploited  by  a  mediocre 
painter,  or  by  a  facile  painter  of  mediocre  mind ; 


JAMES   A.   McNEILL  WHISTLER        41 

only,  perhaps,  so  acceptable  in  Whistler's  case, 
because  it  is  essentially  a  product  of  his  own 
unique  originality. 

It  was  his  craving  for  abstract  expression  as 
well  as  for  abstract  sensation  that  led  to  his  sym- 
phonies ;  and  the  storm  of  abuse  and  ridicule  which 
they  aroused  gave  him,  no  doubt,  a  keener  relish 
for  such  studies.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say 
that  any  of  them  were  done  deliberately  to  mystify 
the  public ;  but  that  he  found  a  sly  relish  in  the 
mystification  is  most  probable,  and  one  may  be- 
lieve that  some  of  these,  to  him  only  experiments 
in  the  record  of  impressions,  were  exhibited  with 
the  Satanic  purpose  of  infuriating  a  public,  so 
enamoured  of  the  "  finished  picture."  To-day, 
however,  these  studies  are  applauded,  and  Whistler 
is  probably  as  contemptuous  of  the  undiscriminat- 
ing  approval  as  of  the  indiscriminate  abuse.  For 
really  their  vogue  is  as  open  to  suspicion  as 
would  be  a  vogue  of  Bach.  In  their  lack  of  any 
graspable  theme  and  in  their  delicately  elaborated 
orchestration  of  tone  they  can  be  appreciated, 
priced,  that  is  to  say,  at  their  proper  worth,  only 
by  those  whose  sense  of  colour  is  very  cultivated ; 
nor  even,  perhaps,  by  all  of  them,  for  these  im- 
pressions are  so  personal  to  their  author  that  they 
must  always  mean  more  and  otherwise  to  him 
than  to  others. 


42  AMERICAN    MASTERS 

The  vogue,  therefore,  may  well  make  him  sad, 
and  sadness  with  Whistler  takes  the  form  of  con- 
tempt. It  is  the  distortion  of  his  character  or  the 
bias  to  its  flaws  produced  by  opposition.  Con- 
viction has  stiffened  into  arrogance,  individuality 
become  deflected  toward  an  attitude  of  pose. 
These  blemishes  are  absent  from  his  work,  which 
is  always  serene  and  lovable ;  they  are  merely 
incidental  to  the  man  and  should  not  enter  into 
an  appreciation  of  his  art,  except  that  he  has  him- 
self forced  a  recognition  of  them  even  upon  his 
admirers.  It  is  this  aspect  of  him  which  Boldini 
has  thrust  upon  the  world  in  his  well-known  por- 
trait. I  have  always  resented  it,  for  it  is  founded 
only  on  partial  fact,  suppressing  the  better  facts 
and  smacking  too  much  of  Boldini  himself  and 
of  the  pruriency  of  suggestion,  with  which  he  has 
invested  so  many  portraits.  The  Whistler  that 
we  see  in  this  picture,  sitting  sideways  on  a  chair, 
his  elbow  on  the  back  of  it  and  his  long  fingers 
thrust  through  the  snaky  black  hair,  represents 
the  last  word  in  modernity ;  thrilling  with  ner- 
vous vibration,  keyed  to  snapping  intensity ;  a 
creation  of  brilliant  egoism,  quivering  on  the  edge 
of  insanity ;  the  quintessence  of  refined  callous- 
ness and  subtlety.  How  much  truer  to  the  man 
and  the  artist  is  Rajon's  portrait;  nimbly  impres- 
sionable, clever  and  elegant,  the  lurking  devil  in 


From  the  collection  of  Colonel  Frank  .1.  Keeker. 


THE   MUSIC    ROOM. 
BY  Jam  is  A.  M<  Xkii.i.  WHISTLER. 


JAMES   A.    McNEILL   WHISTLER        43 

the  eye  and  touch  of  cynicism  on  the  lip  not 
enough  to  disguise  an  underlying  sweetness  and 
freshness  of  mind.  The  other,  in  its  half-truth, 
is  a  uavesty;  this  one,  very  expressive  of  the 
mingled  qualities  of  this  remarkable  man. 

For  none  but  a  man  of  peculiar  sweetness  of 
mind  could  have  conceived  that  masterpiece  in 
the  Luxembourg,  "The  Portrait  of  My  Mother." 
Garbed  in  black,  as  you  will  remember,  she  sits 
in  profile,  with  her  feet  upon  a  footstool  and  her 
hands  laid  peacefully  and  elegantly  on  her  lap ; 
the  lawn  and  lace  of  her  cap  delicately  silhouetted 
against  the  gray  wall.  She  gazes  with  tranquil 
intensity  beyond  the  limit  of  our  comprehension 
along  the  vista  of  memories,  leading  back  through 
maternity  to  a  beautiful  youth.  Nor  is  there 
any  cynicism  in  "The  White  Girl,"  that  sym- 
phony in  white,  rejected  at  the  Salon  of  1863, 
when  the  artist  was  twenty-nine  years  old,  but 
conspicuous  in  the  Salon  des  Refuses.  The  girl 
stands  mysteriously  aloof  frdm  all  contact  with,  or 
suggestion  of,  the  world,  her  dark  eyes  staring 
with  a  troubled,  wistful  look,  as  if  she  had  been 
surprised  in  her  maiden  meditation  and  were  ap- 
prehensive of  something  she  cannot  fathom,  and 
is  too  reliant  upon  herself  to  wholly  fear.  The 
picture  is  no  brilliant  epitome  of  shallowness,  but 
an  almost  reverential   conception,  in  exquisitely 


44  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

idealized  degree,  of  the  poetry  of  maidenhood, 
maturing  normally.  In  both  these  pictures, 
which  come  as  near  as  anything  which  Whistler 
has  done  to  the  generally  accepted  idea  of  a  sub- 
ject, it  is  the  significance,  in  the  one  case  of 
motherhood,  in  the  other  of  maidenhood,  that  he 
has  dwelt  upon,  and  in  both  with  the  fullest  reli- 
ance upon  the  aesthetic  suggestion  to  the  sense, 
respectively,  of  black  and  gray,  and  of  white, 
elaborated  to  an  extreme  of  subtlety.  It  would 
be  impossible,  I  mean,  that  the  colour  schemes,  for 
example,  could  be  reversed ;  each  is  so  intention- 
ally and  conclusively  the  language  fitted  to  the 
idea,  that  one  might  as  well  try  to  put  the  words 
of  Juliet  into  the  mouth  of  Volumnia. 

In  pictures  like  "The  Music  Room,"  there 
is  a  further  step  toward  abstraction.  So  far  as 
it  represents  the  interior  of  a  room  with  walls 
of  ivory-white  set  off  with  dainty  rose-sprigged 
curtains,  in  which  a  lady  in  black  riding-habit 
stands  by  a  marble  mantelpiece,  while  a  child  in 
white  frock  sits  a  little  farther  back  reading,  it  is 
a  genre  picture  of  that  sort  that  Alfred  Stevens 
painted,  done  not  for  any  particular  significance  in 
the  figures,  but  for  the  opportunity  which  it  yields 
of  a  delicate  scheme  of  colour  and  exquisite  adjust- 
ment of  values,  and  for  the  pure  enjoyment  of  rep- 
resenting the  aesthetic  significance  of  these  qualities. 


JAMES   A.    McNEILL   WHISTLER        45 

But  it  is  at  once  more  subtle  and  more  daring 
than  Stevens  could  have  wrought.  It  involves 
a  problem,  the  very  difficulty  of  which  no  doubt 
keyed  the  artist  to  enthusiasm,  to  keep  the  child 
in  white  behind  the  figure  in  black,  and  to  make 
the  latter  a  distinguished  ornament  in  the  picture, 
while  still  preserving  its  pliant  relation  to  its  light 
surroundings  —  a  problem  not  improbably  sug- 
gested, in  part  at  least,  by  one  of  Outamaro's 
prints,  at  any  rate  in  its  Caucasian  transposition 
worthy  to  be  compared  with  the  work  of  the 
Japanese  master.  Nor  is  it  only  a  problem  in 
skill.  Jet  is  beautiful  in  tone  and  texture,  and 
so  is  ivory,  and  the  combination  of  the  two,  set 
off  with  delicate  accents  of  rose,  creates  a  beauty 
of  its  own. 

"  Variations  in  Flesh  and  Green  —  The  Bal- 
cony "  may  be  selected  as  a  still  further  advance 
toward  abstract  sensation  and  expression.  These 
girls  in  kimonas,  standing,  sitting,  and  reclining 
on  the  edge  of  a  river  with  a  glimpse  of  factory 
chimneys  across  the  water,  mean  nothing  in  a 
"  subject"  sense,  and  lack  even  the  reasonableness 
of  the  figures  in  the  previous  picture.  They  are 
parts  of  a  fantasy,  pure  and  simple,  to  which  they 
contribute  impersonally ;  an  artist's  dream  of 
atmosphere  and  colour,  which  you  will  enjoy  or 
not,  according  as  you  can  enter  into  the  abstract 


46  AMERICAN  MASTERS 

intention  of  the  artist.  Reaching  the  essence 
of  beauty  to  a  degree  still  less  alloyed  is  such  a 
picture  as  "  Bognor  —  Nocturne":  blue  smooth 
water  with  shadowy  shapes  of  trawlers  gliding 
like  dusky  phantoms,  and  of  figures  standing  in 
the  shallow  surf;  blue  sky  and  atmosphere,  pene- 
trated with  silvery  luminousness.  It  is  a  scene 
of  exquisite  refreshment  to  the  spirit,  mysteriously 
etherealized,  the  artist  being  so  absorbed  with  the 
spiritual  presence  of  the  summer  night  that  his 
own  soul  echoes  its  very  heart-beats. 

Once  again,  then,  in  all  these  pictures,  it  is  the 
essence  or  innermost  significance  of  the  theme 
that  Whistler  treats ;  itself  a  quality  so  immate- 
rial that  he  shrinks  from  expressing  even  matter 
in  too  distinct  or  tangible  a  form,  enveloping 
it  in  a  shrouded  light,  representing  it  as  a 
concord  of  coloured  masses  with  a  preference 
for  delicate  monotony  of  hues  and  soft  ac- 
centuations, seeking  by  all  means  to  spiritualize 
the  material.  And  this  without  loss  of  stateli- 
ness ;  he  has  learned  the  dignity  of  the  great  line 
from  Velasquez,  and  from  him,  too,  the  magister- 
ial use  of  blacks  and  grays.  Nor  with  the  wild 
irrelevance  of  the  visionary ;  there  are  piquancy 
and  virility  in  all  his  pictures,  not  of  lively  colour 
and  rampageous  brush  work,  but  attained  through 
subtle  surprises  of  detail  and  decorative  original- 


JAMES  A.    McNEILL   WHISTLER        47 

ity  —  qualities  gleaned  from  the  Japanese.  Again, 
in  the  trancelike  intensity  of  Rossetti's  figures,  he 
may  have  found  a  quality  akin  to  his  own  spiritu- 
ality of  sentiment,  just  as  his  love  of  light  and 
of  delicate  discrimination  of  values  links  his  art 
to  that  of  the  impressionists.  And  out  of  these 
various  influences,  his  own  personality,  irresistibly 
original,  at  once  fanciful  and  penetrating,  serene 
and  nervous,  permeated  with  the  quintessence  of 
sensuous  refinement,  he  has  fashioned  for  himself 
a  language  "  faithful  to  the  colouring  of  his  own 
spirit,"  in  the  strictest  sense  original  and  stamped 
with  style  —  a  style  that  is  simple,  earnest,  grand. 
And  even  closer  precision  of  personal  expres- 
sion appears  in  Whistler's  etchings.  For  to  one 
who  seeks  to  render,  not  the  facts,  but  his  sense 
of  the  facts,  etching  offers  greater  freedom  than 
painting.  It  is  the  art  of  all  others  which  permits 
an  artist  to  be  recognized  by  what  he  omitsy 
the  one  in  which  the  means  employed  may  be 
most  pregnant  of  suggestion  and  in  closest  accord 
with  the  personal  idiosyncrasy  of  the  man.  To 
Whistler,  therefore,  with  his  intense  individuality, 
his  discerning  search  for  the  significance  of  beauty 
and  his  instinct  for  simplicity  and  economy  of 
means  which  will  yet  yield  a  full  complexity  of 
meaning,  etching  early  became  a  cherished  form 
of  expression.     In  the  "  Little   French  Series " 


48  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

(1858),  the  "Thames  Series"  (1871),  the  "First 
Venice  Series"  (1880),  and  the  "Second  Venice 
Series"  (1887),  as  well  as  in  other  plates  etched 
in  France,  Holland,  and  Belgium,  he  has  proved 
himself  the  greatest  master  of  the  needle  since 
Rembrandt.  Indeed,  the  eminent  painter-etcher 
and  connoisseur,  Sir  Francis  Seymour  Haden, 
is  credited  with  the  assertion  that,  if  he  had 
to  dispose  of  either  his  Rembrandts  or  his 
Whistlers,  it  would  be  the  former  that  he  would 
relinquish. 

There  is  a  great  difference,  even  in  the  point 
of  view,  between  the  Dutch  master  and  his  mod- 
ern rival.  Both  approached  their  subject,  if  one 
may  say  so,  in  a  reverential  way ;  but  the  former 
with  an  absorption  in  the  scene  and  a  desire  to 
reproduce  it  faithfully.  Whistler,  on  the  other 
hand,  with  more  aloofness  of  feeling,  selecting  the 
mood  or  phase  of  it  on  which  he  chooses  to  dwell 
that  he  may  inform  it  with  his  own  personal  sense 
of  significance.  The  Rembrandt  print  —  to  bor 
row  De  Quincey's  distinction  —  is  rather  a  tri- 
umph of  knowledge ;  the  Whistler  a  triumph 
of  power.  While  the  method  of  both  represents 
the  highest  degree  of  pregnant  succinctness, 
Rembrandt  drew  the  landscape  while  Whistler 
transposes  from  it.  The  visible  means,  in  his 
later  etchings,  become  less   and  less,  their  sig- 


JAMES   A.    McNEILL   WHISTLER        49 

nificance  continually  fuller;  and  in  his  study  of 
phases  of  nature  he  has  carried  the  interpreta- 
tion of  light  and  atmosphere  beyond  the  limits 
of  Rembrandt. 

In  the  "  Thames  Series,"  which  has  perpetu- 
ated the  since  vanished  characteristics  of  the  old 
river  side,  he  came  nearest  to  the  Dutch  etcher, 
recording  the  scenes  with  a  comprehension  of 
detail  as  complete  as  that  of  Rembrandt's  "  Mill." 
Seeking  always  the  significance  of  his  subject,  he 
seems  to  have  felt  that  here  the  significance  lay  in 
the  curious,  dilapidated  medley  of  details;  that 
even  a  weather-worn  timber  and  the  very  nails  in 
it  contributed  their  share  to  the  impression,  so 
that,  while  he  must  needs  select  and  omit,  the 
problem  was  one  of  how  much  to  avoid  omitting. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  his  later  prints,  the  prob- 
blem  is  reversed.  Following  his  own  personal 
evolution  toward  more  complete  abstraction,  both 
in  sense  and  expression,  it  is  how  little  he  may 
put  in  and  yet  express  the  full  significance. 

Whistler's  art,  in  brief,  is  logically  related,  alike 
to  realism,  to  the  poetry  of  the  men  of  1830,  and 
to  the  motives  of  the  impressionists,  and  repre- 
sents the  wider  influence  of  his  times  in  its  keen 
analysis  of  phenomena  and  the  independently 
personal  bias  he  has  given  to  it;  in  the  search 
for  new  sensations  of  the  most  subtle  kind  and  in 


50  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

a  tendency  at  times  to  exalt  good  manners,  that 
is  to  say  style,  above  the  qualities  of  intrinsic 
merit.  His  art  has  been  too  much  a  product  of 
himself,  notwithstanding  that  it  reflects  in  spirit- 
ualized form  the  higher  tendencies  of  his  age,  for 
him  to  have  been  the  founder  of  a  school  or  to 
have  influenced  followers  directly.  Yet,  indirectly, 
his  influence  has  been  weighty.  Alike  by  his  ex- 
ample and  by  his  pungent  utterances  he  has  been 
instrumental,  more  than  others,  in  giving  a  quietus 
to  mediocrity  in  art,  both  to  the  bathos  of  the 
literary  picture  and  to  the  banality  of  merely  imi- 
tative painting.  Mediocrity  still  lingers  and  must 
linger  as  long  as  commonplace  minds  devote  them- 
selves to  painting;  but  its  prestige  has  been  so 
successfully  impaired  that  now  we  regard  a  taste 
for  it  on  the  part  of  a  collector  of  pictures  as  an 
infantile  disease,  like  the  measles,  incidental  to  an 
early  career  of  appreciation,  though  not  necessarily 
fatal  to  more  matured  connoisseurship. 

Whether  we  shall  ever  reach  that  degree  of 
cultivation  which  will  need  no  further  stimulus  to 
enjoyment  in  a  picture  than  such  abstract  sugges- 
tion to  the  imagination  as  music  affords,  time  alone 
will  show.  Meanwhile,  as  we  are  able  to  con- 
ceive of  a  picture  now,  it  has  its  genesis  in  the 
concrete,  from  which  even  Whistler  has  not  tried 
to  emancipate  himself  entirely.     There  is  a  beauti- 


JAMES   A.   McNEILL  WHISTLER        51 

ful  humanity  in  most  of  his  work,  the  humanity 
of  human  nature  or  the  human  relation  of  the 
landscape  to  ourselves ;  and  if  he  is  able  some- 
times to  enchant  us  without  any  apparent  human 
significance,  it  is  because  he  is  Whistler  —  a  genius. 


IV 

JOHN   SINGER   SARGENT 


IV 

JOHN   SINGER  SARGENT 

A  SUM  MARY  of  John  S.  Sargent's  position 
as  an  artist  must  recall  the  exhibition  of 
his  work  shown  at  Copley  Hall,  Boston,  in  1899. 
There  were  exhibited  some  fifty  portraits  and 
seventy-five  sketches  and  studies,  while  hard  by 
in  the  Museum  hung  his  large  subject  picture, 
"  El  Jaleo,"  and  in  the  library  could  be  seen  his 
mural  decorations.  It  was  an  impressive  showing, 
both  in  amount  and  quality,  for  an  artist  then  little 
over  forty  years  of  age. 

But  Sargent  has  been  a  favoured  child  of  the 
Muses,  and  early  reached  a  maturity  for  which 
others  have  to  labour  long  and  in  the  face  of  disap- 
pointments. He,  however,  had  never  anything 
to  unlearn.  From  the  first  he  came  under  the 
influence  of  taste  and  style,  the  qualities  which  to 
this  day  most  distinguish  his  work.  The  son  of 
a  Massachusetts  gentleman  who  had  retired  from 
the  practice  of  medicine  in  Philadelphia,  he  was 
born  in  Florence,  and  there  spent  his  youth. 
The  home  life  was  penetrated  with    refinement; 

55 


56  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

a  good  classical  and  modern  education  came  in 
due  course,  and  all  around  him  were  the  dignity 
and  beauty  of  Florence,  its  tender  beauty  of 
atmosphere  and  colour  and  the  noble  memorials 
of  its  galleries  and  streets.  Perhaps  no  city  in 
the  world  has  so  distinctive  a  spirit,  at  once  stimu- 
lating to  the  intellect  and  refining  to  the  senses. 
Those  of  us  who  have  felt  it  only  after  years  of 
buffeting  in  a  grosser  atmosphere  can  but  guess 
what  it  means  to  have  come  under  its  influence 
from  childhood,  during  the  impressionable  period 
of  youth  up  to  eighteen.  And  not  as  a  mere  resi- 
dent of  the  place,  from  the  force  of  habit  purblind 
to  its  charm,  but  quickened  by  parents  who  them- 
selves were  products  of  another  kind  of  civiliza- 
tion, keen  to  appreciate,  to  absorb,  and  to  live 
in  its  spirit ;  possessed,  also,  of  the  American 
temperament  so  alert  and  sensitive  to  impressions, 
while  removed  from  the  dulling  influence  of  our 
exceeding  practicalness. 

When  the  young  Sargent  knocked  at  the 
studio  of  Carolus-Duran  in  the  Boulevard  Mont- 
parnasse  with  a  portfolio  of  studies  under  his  arm, 
drawings  from  Titian,  Tintoretto,  and  Veronese, 
he  was  no  smart  young  student,  full  of  up-to-date 
ideas.  Very  modest  he  is  described  as  being,  of 
quiet,  reflective  disposition,  pleased  that  his  draw- 
ings won  the  approval    of  the   master   and    the 


CARMENC1TA. 

By  John  S.  Sargent. 


From  the  Metropolitan  Mi 


nil  ill  Art. 

PORTRAIT   OF   MR.   MARQUAND. 
By  John  S.  Sargent. 


JOHN  SINGER   SARGENT  57 

enthusiasm  of  the  students,  and  eager  to  set  him- 
self to  learn.  With  a  facility  that  was  partly  a 
natural  gift,  partly  the  result  of  a  steady  accept- 
ance of  the  problems  presented,  he  proceeded  to 
absorb  the  master ;  his  breadth  of  picturesque 
style  and  refined  pictorial  sense,  his  sound  and 
scientific  method,  not  devoid  of  certain  tricks  of 
illusion  and  his  piquant  and  persuasive  modernity 
—  the  sum  total  of  an  art  that  was  a  modern 
Frenchman's  paraphrase  of  one  of  the  biggest  of 
the  old  masters,  Velasquez.  At  twenty-three  he 
painted  a  portrait  of  Carolus,  which  shows  he  had 
absorbed  his  master  so  thoroughly  as  to  be  uncon- 
scious of  the  incidentals  of  his  method  and  to 
have  grasped  only  the  essentials  with  such  com- 
plete assimilation,  that  what  he  produces  is  already 
his  own.  Later,  he  himself  visited  Madrid  and 
came  under  the  direct  spell  of  Velasquez.  The 
grand  line  he  had  learned  while  still  a  boy,  and 
from  Carolus  the  seeing  of  colour  as  coloured 
light,  the  modelling  in  planes,  the  mysteries  of 
sharp  and  vanishing  outlines,  appearing  and  reap- 
pearing under  the  natural  action  of  light, Jism 

of  observation  at  once  brilliant  and  refined,  large 
and  penetrating ;  and  all  these  qualities  he  found 
united  in  the  subtly  grandiose  canvases  of  the 
great  Spaniard.  Finally,  from  all  these  influences, 
he  has  fashioned  a  method  very  much  his  own. 


58  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

And  how  shall  one  describe  this  method  ?  It 
reveals  the  alertness  and  versatility  of  the  Ameri- 
can temperament.  Nothing  escapes  his  observa- 
tion, up  to  a  certain  point  at  least ;  he  is  never 
tired  of  fresh  experiment ;  never  repeats  his  com- 
positions and  schemes  of  colour,  nor  shows  perfunc- 
toriness  or  weariness  of  brush.  In  all  his  work 
there  is  a  vivid  meaningfulness ;  in  his  portraits, 
especially,  an  amazing  suggestion  of  actuality.  On 
the  other  hand,  his  virtuosity  is  largely  French, 
reaching  a  perfection  of  assurance  that  the  quick- 
witted American  is,  for  the  most  part,  in  too  great 
a  hurry  to  acquire  ;  a  patient  perfection,  not  reli- 
ant upon  mere  impression  or  force  of  tempera- 
ment. In  its  abounding  resourcefulness  there  is 
a  mingling  of  audacity  and  conscientiousness  ;  a 
facility  so  complete  that  the  acts  of  perception 
and  of  execution  seem  identical,  and  an  honesty 
that  does  not  shrink  from  admitting  that  such  and 
such  a  point  was  unattainable  by  him,  or  that  to 
have  attained  it  would  have  disturbed  the  balance 
of  the  whole.  And  yet  this  virtuosity,  though 
it  is  French  in  character,  is  free  of  the  French 
manner,  as  indeed  of  any  mannerism.  For  ex- 
ample, his  English  men  and  women,  his  English 
children  especially,  belong  distinctly  to  English 
life.  Though  he  may  portray  them  in  terms  of 
Parisian  technique,  he  never  confuses  the  idioms, 


JOHN  SINGER   SARGENT  59 

being  far  too  keenly  alive  to  the  subtle  differences 
of  race. 

This  skill  of  hand  is  at  the  service  of  a  brilliant 
pictorial  sense.  Like  a  true  painter,  he  sees  a  pic- 
ture in  everything  he  studies.  Perhaps  it  would 
be  truer  to  say  that  he  sees  the  picture,  the  one 
which  for  the  time  being  has  taken  possession  of 
his  imagination  and  to  which  he  is  willing  to  sacri- 
fice even  truth,  or  at  least  some  portion  of  truth, 
rather  than  to  permit  the  integrity  of  his  mental 
picture  to  be  impaired.  This  pictorial  sense  is 
one  of  the  sources  of  the  greatness  and  of  the 
less  than  greatness  in  his  work.  It  gives  to  each 
of  his  canvases  a  distinct  aesthetic  charm ;  grandi- 
ose, for  example,  in  the  portrait  of  "  Lady  Elcho, 
Mrs.  Arden,  and  Mrs.  Tennant,"  ravishingly  ele- 
gant in  the  "  Mrs.  Meyer  and  Children,"  delicately 
quaint  in  the  "  Beatrix,"  and  so  on  through  a  range 
of  motives,  each  variously  characterized  by  gran- 
deur of  line,  suppleness  of  arrangement,  and  fasci- 
nating surprise  of  detail ;  used  with  extraordinary 
originality,  but  always  conformable  to  an  instinc- 
tive sense  of  balance  and  rhythm.  And  then,  too, 
how  tactful  is  the  selection  of  pose,  costume,  and 
accessories !  With  what  taste  he  creates  environ- 
ment for  his  conception  of  the  subject ! 

It  is,  however,  in  regard  to  the  conception  of 
his  subject  that  Sargent  challenges  criticism.     How 


60  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

far  does  he  render  the  character  of  the  sitter  ?  To 
say  that  his  characterization  is  slap-dash  and  super- 
ficial is,  surely,  going  too  far.  It  was  confuted  by 
that  exhibition  of  fifty  portraits,  which  represented 
at  least  fifty  distinct  persons.  Nor  with  that  pano- 
rama of  his  art  in  one's  memory  can  one  admit 
that  he  has  no  real  sympathy  with  his  sitters. 
Very  possibly,  however,  it  is  not  a  personal  sym- 
pathy, and  for  two  reasons.  He  is  a  picture 
maker  before  he  is  a  portraitist,  aud  in  portraiture 
has  less  interest  in  the  individual  than  in  the  type 
which  he  or  she  represents.  This  latter  particular 
is  symptomatic,  partly  of  the  artist  himself  and 
partly  of  his  times.  He  is  not  of  the  world  in 
which  ne  plays  so  conspicuous  a  part,  but  preserves 
an  aloofness  from  it  and  studies  it  with  the  collect- 
edness  of  an  onlooker  interested  in  the  moving 
show  and  in  its  general  trends  of  motive,  but  with 
an  individual  sympathy  only  occasionally  elicited, 
as  when  he  paints  Georg  Henschel,  like  himself,  a 
musician.  Again  it  is  an  affectation  of  the  class 
from  which  most  of  his  sitters,  especially  the  ladies, 
are  drawn  to  exhibit  the  studied  unconviction  so 
deliciously  represented  in  Anthony  Hope's  "  Dolly 
Dialogues."  The  elegant  shallowness  of  so  many 
of  his  portraits  is  true  enough  in  a  general  way, 
and  very  likely  in  the  individual  case.  There  is 
another  type,  embodying  the  thinking-for-herself 


JOHN   SINGER   SARGENT  61 

and  the  greater  latitude  of  action  of  the  modern 
woman.  They  are,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  product 
of  an  age  of  nerves,  and  in  his  portraits  of  them, 
there  is  perceptible  an  equivalent  restlessness  of 
manner,  a  highly  strung  intention,  almost  a  stringi- 
ness  of  nervous  expression.  Again,  I  can  recall 
in  the  Boston  exhibition  two  portraits  of  ladies 
whose  esprit  was  of  a  kind  that  quiet  folks  would 
consider  fast.  Their  cases  also  had  been  keenly 
diagnosed  and  met  with  the  skill  of  an  artist  who 
did  not  care  to  extenuate,  nor  on  the  other  hand 
had  fallen  under  personal  subjection  to  the  physi- 
cal attractiveness,  but  set  down  what  he  saw  and 
surrounded  it  with  the  elegant  atmosphere  that 
was  its  salvation  in  real  life.  It  is  here  that  he 
compares  to  such  advantage  with  a  painter  like 
Boldini.  Sargent  has  instinctive  refinement.  It 
would  be  quite  impossible  for  him  to  have  any 
feelings  toward  his  subjects  other  than  those  of  a 
true  gentleman ;  and,  though  he  may  represent  in 
a  lady  a  full  flavour  of  the  modern  spirit,  he  never 
allows  the  modernity  to  exceed  the  limks  of  good 
taste.  For  the  same  reason  Sargent's  pictures, 
though  many  of  them  have  a  restlessness  of  their 
own,  seem  quiet  alongside  Boldini's.  The  latter 
makes  a  motive  of  nervous  tenuosity,  and  his 
pictures,  if  seen  frequently,  become  wiry  in  sug- 
gestion, and  defeat  their  own  purpose  of  being 


62  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

vibrative;  but  Sargent's,  controlled  by  a  fine 
sobriety  of  feeling,  another  phase  of  his  unfailing 
taste  and  tact,  retain  their  suppleness.  Their 
actuality  is  all  the  more  convincing  because  it  is 
not  the  motive,  but  an  incident. 

Yet,  even  so,  this  actuality  is  of  a  very  different 
quality  from  that  reached  by  the  old  masters.  I 
have  in  mind  an  inevitable  comparison,  suggested 
by  his  portrait  of  Mr.  Marquand  in  the  Metro- 
politan Museum  with  one  by  Titian  on  the  same 
wall  and  with  a  Franz  Hals,  a  Velasquez,  and  a 
Rembrandt  in  an  adjoining  gallery.  In  all  these 
latter  there  is  a  gravity  of  feeling  that  is  not  alone 
due  to  the  subduing  effects  of  time ;  while  Sar- 
gent's portrait,  even  apart  from  the  sleek  fatness 
of  the  brush  work  which  age  will  mature,  is  the 
product  of  a  habit  of  mind  altogether  different. 
It  lacks  the  intimacy  of  the  "  Wife "  of  Franz 
Hals,  the  penetrating  depth  of  the  "  Doge  Gri- 
mani,"  the  quiet  assurance  of  Velasquez's  "  Don 
Carlos,"  and  the  intense  sympathy  of  the  Rem- 
brandt, though  the  last  two  are  only  moderate 
examples  of  the  masters.  Instead,  it  reveals  a 
certain  assertiveness  in  its  assurance,  an  intensity 
of  nervous  force  rather  than  of  intellectual  or  sym- 
pathetic effort,  a  brilliant  epitome  rather  than  a 
profound  study.  It  has  not  the  permanence  of 
feeling,  either  in  its  characterization  or  method ; 


JOHN  SINGER  SARGENT  63 

that  suggestion  of  perennial,  stable  truth,  which, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  past,  would  insure 
it  a  place  among  the  great  old  masters  of  the 
future.  Among  the  masters  we  may  feel  certain 
that  Sargent  will  be  reckoned  as  having  been  one 
of  the  most  conspicuous  figures  of  his  age  ;  but  his 
vogue  will  rise  and  dwindle  according  to  the  amount 
of  interest  felt  for  the  time  being  in  the  age  which 
he  represented;  it  will  scarcely  have  that  inevi- 
tableness  of  conviction,  which,  when  once  recog- 
nized, must  abide.  If  this  forecast  is  correct,  the 
reason  is  that  Sargent,  though  raised  above  his 
time,  scarcely  reveals  in  his  portraits  elevation  of 
mind ;  he  has  the  clear  eye  of  the  philosopher 
without  his  depth  and  breadth  of  vision ;  he  has 
possessed  himself  of  his  age,  and  the  age  has  taken 
possession  of  him.  He  swims  on  its  sea  with 
strokes  of  magnificent  assurance,  but  with  a  vision 
bounded  by  the  little  surface  waves  around  him ; 
he  has  not  sat  above  upon  the  cliffs,  quietly  pon- 
dering its  wider  and  grander  movements. 

So  the  intimacy  revealed  in  the  great  majority 
of  Sargent's  portraits  is  of  that  degree  and  quality 
which  passes  for  intimacy  in  the  polite  society  of 
to-day  —  a  conformability  to  certain  types  of  man- 
ner and  feeling,  with  interesting  little  accents  of 
individuality,  that  shall  distinguish  without  too 
keenly  differentiating ;  traits  of  style  rather  than 


64  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

of  personality.  Sometimes  there  is  even  less  than 
this.  The  subject  would  seem  to  have  got  upon 
the  artist's  nerves,  interfering  with  the  usual  poise 
of  his  study,  so  that  he  seems  to  have  allowed 
himself  to  be  sidetracked  on  to  some  loopline 
of  the  temperament.  Occasionally  he  touches  a 
deeper  level  of  intimacy,  as  in  the  portraits  of 
Henschel,  Mr.  Penrose,  and  Mr.  Marquand,  and 
oftentimes  in  children's  portraits,  notably  in  that 
of  Homer  St.  Gaudens.  But  for  the  most  part, 
I  believe,  it  is  not  the  personality  of  the  sitter 
that  attracts  us  so  much  as  that  of  the  artist, 
which  he  has  seized  upon  the  occasion  to  present 
to  us ;  a  personality  of  inexhaustible  facets  and 
of  a  variety  of  expression  that,  for  the  time 
being  at  least,  creates  an  illusion  of  being  all- 
sufficient. 

What  a  contrast  he  presents  to  Whistler,  with 
whom  he  shares  the  honour  of  being  among  the 
very  few  distinctly  notable  painters  of  the  present 
day !  Sargent  with  his  grip  upon  the  actual, 
Whistler  in  his  search  for  the  supersensitive  sig- 
nificance, are  the  direct  antipodes  in  motive.  Each 
started  with  a  justifiable  consciousness  of  supe- 
riority to  the  average  taste  of  his  times  ;  but  while 
Whistler,  on  one  side  of  his  character  a  man  of 
the  world,  has  in  his  art  withdrawn  himself  into  a 
secluded  region  of  poetry,  Sargent,  almost  a  recluse, 


JOHN   SINGER  SARGENT  65 

has  delighted  his  imagination  with  the  seemings 
and  shows  of  things  and  with  their  material  sig- 
nificance. 

Is  the  reason  for  this  merely  that  success  claimed 
him  early  and  that  he  has  not  been  able  to  extri- 
cate himself  from  the  golden  entanglement,  or  that 
deeper  one,  noticeable  in  many  artists,  that  their 
artistic  personality  is  the  direct  antithesis  of  that 
personality  by  which  they  are  commonly  known 
to  the  world  ?  Otherwise,  this  man  with  his  gift 
of  seeing  pictures,  with  his  power  of  a  brush  that 
seems  loaded  with  light  rather  than  with  pigment, 
with  his  smiting  force  or  tender  suggestiveness  of 
expression  —  what  might  he  not  have  done  had 
he  followed  the  bent  of  his  mind,  a  mind  stored 
with  culture,  serene  and  reflective  ?  Something, 
doubtless,  less  dazzling  than  his  portraits,  but 
more  poetical,  more  mysteriously  suggestive,  more 
distinctly  creative.  As  it  is,  some  little  studies 
of  Venice,  such  as  "Venetian  Bead  Stringers," 
come  nearer  probably  to  the  true  spirit  of  Sar- 
gent ;  to  that  exquisiteness  of  fancy  which  he  de- 
veloped more  completely  in  the  study  of  children 
lighting  lanterns  in  a  garden,  "  Carnation  Lily,  Lily 
Rose."  The  refined  originality  of  this  embroidery 
of  light  and  shadow,  the  lights  so  brilliant,  the 
shadows  penetrated  with  mystery,  the  affectionate 
tenderness  with  which   the  children   and  flowers 


66  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

are  represented,  the  lovely  imaginativeness  of  the 
whole  conception,  bespoke  qualities  which  have 
appeared  only  partially  in  the  portraits,  and  are 
altogether  of  a  rarer  significance  than  their  vivid 
actuality.  This  picture  is  perhaps  even  more 
acceptable  than  his  elaborate  decorations  in  the 
Boston  Public  Library,  because  it  represents  more 
unreservedly  an  artist's  vision  and  one  of  such 
delicate  apprehensiveness.  The  decorations  in- 
volve a  more  laboured,  conscious  effort  to  pro- 
duce something  noble,  and  the  literary  allusion 
encroaches  somewhat  upon  the  aesthetic.  Yet  to 
enjoy  them  we  are  not  bound  to  thread  our  way 
through  the  maze  of  mythological  suggestion. 
The  panels  are  full  of  dignity  and  beauty,  con- 
sidered purely  as  decoration ;  finely  rhythmical  in 
the  frieze,  stern  with  tensity  of  form  and  delib- 
erate harshness  of  colour  in  the  lunette,  a  labyrinth 
of  tapestried  ornament  in  the  soffit  of  the  arch. 

Their  significance,  both  as  decoration  and  allu- 
sion, is  progressive,  passing  from  the  serene  sim- 
plicity and  tempered  realism  of  the  prophets, 
through  the  mingling  of  human  tragedy  and  sym- 
bolism in  the  misery  of  the  apostate  Jews,  up 
to  the  bewilderment  of  beauty  and  horror  in  the 
representation  of  the  tangle  of  false  faiths.  More- 
over, this  graduation  of  motive  bears  a  very  skil- 
fully adjusted  relation  to  the  architectural  function 


JOHN   SINGER   SARGENT  67 

of  the  several  spaces  embellished.  Unfortunately 
the  room  itself  has  very  little  architectural  reason- 
ableness, and  is  unworthy  of  the  decorations,  which 
will  not  establish  their  full  dignity  of  effect  until 
the  remaining  spaces  are  filled.  So  it  is  scarcely 
fair  to  compare  them  with  Puvis  de  Chavannes's 
in  the  same  building,  which  involve  a  completed 
scheme,  for  which,  too,  the  architects  made  due 
provision.  Further,  the  motives  of  the  two  artists 
are  so  radically  different :  Puvis,  content  to  shadow 
forth  a  vague  conception  in  abstract  terms ;  Sar- 
gent, seeking  to  embody  the  facts  of  men's  mental 
and  moral  life  in  their  direct  and  actual  signifi- 
cance. It  was  a  more  daring  problem,  and  one  that 
perhaps  is  more  closely  knitted  to  the  feeling  of 
our  times.  The  solution  is  a  most  notable  attempt 
to  bring  the  intellectual  faculties  into  harmonious 
accord  with  the  aesthetic. 

It  is  along  the  line  of  these  decorations  and  of 
"  Carnation  Lily,  Lily  Rose "  that  one  believes 
the  true  Sargent  may  be  discerned.  In  them  he 
is  giving  utterance  to  himself;  in  his  portraits 
responding  with  a  certain  hauteur  to  the  allure- 
ments of  his  day. 


V 
WINSLOW   HOMER 


V 
WINSLOW   HOMER 

IN  the  American  section  at  the  recent  Paris 
Exposition,  no  painter  made  a  more  distinct 
mark  than  Winslow  Homer.  The  foreign  critics 
seemed  to  be  conscious  of  a  fresh  note  in  his  pic- 
tures :  one  not  traceable  to  European  influences, 
still  less  suggestive  of  Parisian  technique ;  a  note 
of  unmistakable  force  and  independence.  Could 
it  be  considered  representatively  American  ? 

Almost  for  the  first  time  this  question  appeared 
to  be  asked  with  a  real  interest  in  the  answer. 
Foreigners  had  long  been  acquainted  with  painters 
from  America,  who  came  over  in  increasing  num- 
bers, and  showed  a  remarkable  faculty  of  quickly 
assimilating  the  teaching  and  influences  of  Europe. 
But  were  there  any  distinctively  American  painters? 
Those  students  who  remained  in  Europe,  though 
many  of  them  were  individual  and  forceful  men, 
merged  themselves  more  or  less  completely  in 
their  new  environment.  What,  then,  became  of 
those  who  returned  to  America?  Presumably 
they  carried  back  with   them  the  Europeanisms 

7' 


72  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

they  had  acquired.  So  far  as  could  be  judged 
from  the  showing  made  by  American  painters 
at  previous  expositions,  they  were  but  reflecting 
the  influences  of  Paris  or  of  German  and  English 
painting.  Was  there,  in  fact,  as  distinguished 
from  art  in  America,  any  American  art?  And 
with  a  languid  interest  in  a  matter  so  far  detached 
from  their  personal  knowledge,  the  foreigners 
had  answered  the  question  for  themselves,  nega- 
tively. However,  the  Exposition  of  1900  con- 
tained an  American  section  which  revealed  a 
great  deal  of  motive  and  character  that  could 
not  be  lightly  dismissed  as  but  a  reflex  of 
Europe.  It  might  have  been  made  even  more 
representative  of  the  difference  which  the  Ameri- 
can environment  is  steadily  impressing  upon  the 
work  of  Americans  who  live  and  paint  at  home ; 
but  notwithstanding  its  shortcomings  in  this  re- 
spect, the  exhibition  undoubtedly  gave  evidence 
that  such  difference  already  existed.  The  evi- 
dence was  largely  of  the  circumstantial  kind,  to 
be  gathered  not  from  any  patent  fact  so  much 
as  from  a  collating  of  various  hints  of  motive  and 
character,  and  from  a  comparison  of  them  with 
those  exhibited  in  the  pictures  of  other  countries. 
Then  one  gradually  became  conscious  of  more 
sobriety,  earnestness,  and  simplicity;  in  fact,  of  a 
more  obvious  conviction,  in  the  American  work 


From  the  MuReum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston. 

THE  LOOKOUT  — "ALL'S  WELL." 
By  Winslow  Homkr. 


WINSLOW    HOMER  73 

than  in  that  of  the  French  section  as  a  whole. 
The  Americans  did  not  seem  to  be  painting  in 
obedience  to  some  vogue,  still  less  with  the  pur- 
pose of  creating  one ;  they  were  not  thrashing 
around  for  motives  which  should  electrify,  by 
shock  or  thrill,  and  prove  a  brief  sensation ;  nor, 
on  the  other  hand,  did  they  seem  to  be  bent 
upon  exhibiting  the  particular  advantages  of  this 
or  that  method  of  technique.  Their  work  for 
the  most  part  was  unassuming  and  straightfor- 
ward, penetrated  with  realism  and  often  tem- 
pered with  poetic  feeling ;  not  less  suggestive  of 
the  true  painterlike  way  of  conceiving  the  sub- 
ject because  it  was  executed  with  so  little  desire 
to  exploit  the  mere  painterlike  facility  of  brush 
work,  and  yet  showing  a  sound  and  advanced 
acquisition  in  technique.  Indeed,  it  was  in  this 
particular  that  the  American  work  showed  supe- 
rior to  that  of  Norway,  with  the  fresh,  vigorous 
spirit  of  which  it  otherwise  had  so  much  in  com- 
mon. These  qualities  of  earnest  force,  of  directly 
independent  vision  and  strong,  straightforward 
treatment,  so  conspicuous  in  Homer's  pictures, 
drew  the  foreign  critics  to  a  conclusion  that  this 
virile  personality  might  be  really  representative 
of  American  art. 

And  so  it  is  in  the  sense  that  it  embodies  the 
qualities  and  point  of  view  for  which  all  our  most 


74  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

individual  painters  are  striving,  though  its  power 
and  depth  place  him  above  any  direct  comparison 
with  other  painters,  unless  it  be  with  Homer 
Martin.  Like  the  latter,  his  art  has  grown  out 
of  and  into  the  circumstances  of  his  environment, 
the  most  reasonable  and  fertile  way  of  growth 
both  in  plant  life  and  in  the  life  of  man.  As 
a  boy  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  he  led  the  true 
boy's  life,  interested  in  animals,  fond  of  fishing, 
observant  also  of  the  character  and  forms  of 
nature,  early  recording  his  impressions  on  paper 
in  a  long  series  of  methodically  careful  drawings. 
So,  from  the  start,  he  learned  to  feel  things  and 
to  see  things  for  himself,  and  to  express  them  as 
they  affected  him.  The  accident  of  an  advertise- 
ment in  a  local  paper  landed  him  in  a  lithographer's 
workshop,  where  for  two  years  his  habits  of  me- 
thodical application  were  confirmed,  leaving  him  at 
the  end  no  less  earnest  and  enthusiastic  as  a  stu- 
dent, but  determined  that  henceforth  he  would 
bow  the  neck  to  no  one.  After  a  brief  sojourn 
in  a  Boston  studio,  during  which  he  contributed 
drawings  to  Harper  and  Brothers,  he  came  up  to 
New  York,  refusing  an  offer  to  enter  the  art 
department  of  those  publishers,  but  accepting 
an  appointment  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  to 
represent  them  at  the  front.  Meanwhile,  he 
had   been    attending    the    night    school    of    the 


WINSLOW   HOMER  75 

National  Academy,  and  taking  lessons  in  paint- 
ing from  Frederic  Rondel,  a  Frenchman,  then 
in  considerable  repute  as  a  painter. 

His  contributions  to  Harper's  Weekly,  though 
somewhat  tamely  precise  in  drawing,  gave  with 
much  spirit  the  character  as  well  as  the  episodes 
of  camp  life.  Subsequently,  on  his  own  behalf, 
he  paid  two  more  visits  to  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  during  which  he  put  in  practice  what 
he  had  learned  of  painting,  finally  producing  '^Pris- 
oners from  the  Front."  This  picture,  shown  at 
the  exhibition  of  the  National  Academy  in  1864, 
made  a  profound  impression.  Popular  excite- 
ment was  at  fever  heat,  so  the  picture  fitted  the 
hour ;  but  it  would  not  have  enlisted  such  an 
enthusiastic  reception  if  it  had  not  approximated 
in  intensity  to  the  pitch  of  the  people's  feeling. 
It  has,  in  fact,  the  elements  of  a  great  picture, 
quite  apart  from  its  association  with  the  circum- 
stances of  the  time :  a  subject  admirably  adapted 
to  pictorial  representation,  explaining  itself  at 
once,  offering  abundant  opportunity  for  characteri- 
zation, and  in  its  treatment  free  from  any  trivi- 
ality. On  the  contrary,  the  painter  has  felt  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  episode  itself  the  profound  sig- 
nificance of  the  struggle  in  which  this  was  but  an 
eddy,  and  in  the  generalization  of  his  theme  has 
imparted  to  it  the  character  of  a  type. 


76  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  true  artist  parts  com- 
pany with  the  mere  practitioner,  however  accom- 
plished. His  work  is  more  than  of  local  and 
temporary  interest ;  it  has  a  savour,  at  least,  of 
the  universal,  which  keeps  its  significance  from 
perishing.  The  savour  need  not  necessarily  be 
serious ;  it  may  be,  as  in  Watteau's  case,  a  distil- 
lation of  the  elegance  of  life ;  but  with  Homer 
its  seriousness  was  inevitable,  his  temperament 
seeming  to  require  a  ground-bass  of  motive, 
grand  and  solemn.  So  when  he  occupies  himself 
with  character  pictures,  drawn  from  country  life, 
they  are  comparatively  trivial.  He  cannot,  like 
Millet  or  Israels,  discover  the  fundamental  note 
of  humanity  beneath  the  individual.  That  note 
may  be  solemn  enough,  but  it  is  not  big  enough 
in  a  forceful  way  to  awake  his  imagination. 
His  pictures  of  this  genre  are  shrewdly  studied 
and  reasonably  good  in  characterization ;  but, 
being  detached  from  any  background  of  big 
intention,  their  interest  is  merely  local,  and  they 
are  not  done  with  that  ease  and  style  which 
might  secure  them  technical  distinction.  But 
while  waiting  for  the  fountain  of  his  motive  to 
be  again  moved,  how  commendable  it  is  that  he 
did  not  set  to  work  to  repeat  his  success  of  the 
"  Prisoners  from  the  Front,"  as  a  smaller  man 
would  have  been  tempted  to  do ! 


WINSLOW   HOMER  77 

At  length,  however,  he  finds  again  the  funda- 
mental motive  which  he  needs,  this  time  in  the 
inspiration  of  the  ocean.  Off  and  on  for  many 
years  he  has  led  the  life  of  a  recluse  on  a  spit  of 
land  near  Scarboro,  Maine,  whose  brown  rocks 
piled  in  diagonal  strata  have  from  time  im- 
memorial withstood  the  onset  of  the  Atlantic 
combers ;  an  atom  of  impregnable  stability  in 
presence  of  vastness,  solitude,  and  the  perpetual 
flux  of  elemental  forces.  Grounded  on  his  own 
stalwart  individuality,  he  has  kept  himself  aloof 
from  the  truck  and  scrimage  of  conventional  life 
and  filled  his  soul  with  the  vastness  of  nature. 
How  instances  of  this  isolation  from  the  world 
multiply  in  the  story  of  art :  Watteau  retreat- 
ing into  the  impenetrability  of  his  own  soul ; 
Delacroix  and  Puvis  de  Chavannes  into  their 
barred  studios ;  Rousseau,  Millet,  and  the  rest 
of  their  brotherhood  into  the  recesses  of  the 
forest.  Such  isolation  seems  to  be  the  road  to 
greatness ;  partly,  perhaps,  because  the  man  him- 
self must  have  the  elements  of  greatness  in  him 
to  wish  to  do  without  the  constant  reenforcement 
of  the  world,  where  men  and  women  prop  their 
shoulders  together  and  make  believe  that  they 
are  standing  independently. 

Henceforth,  then,  the  ocean  supplies  the 
ground-bass  of  motive  in  Homer's  art,  and  the 


78  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

magnitude  of  its  influence  begins  to  inform  his 
work.  Deepening  in  significance,  it  becomes 
simpler  in  expression,  and  the  simplicity  is  re- 
vealed in  a  fuller  synthesis  of  manner ;  it  grows 
in  comprehension,  in  force  and  directness,  gaining 
breadth  and  freedom  of  execution,  greater  purity 
and  subtlety  of  colour.  But  he  does  not  at  once 
realize  the  full  significance  of  the  ocean  itself. 
For  a  time  he  sees  only  its  secondary  signifi- 
cance in  relation  to  the  life  of  the  fisherfolk,  to 
whom  it  is,  at  once,  the  means  of  existence  and 
a  perpetual  threat  of  danger.  He  paints  such 
grandly  dramatic  pictures  as  "  The  Life  Line," 
"  Eight  Bells,"  "  Danger,"  «  All's  Well,"  "Under- 
tow," "  Watching  the  Tempest,"  and  "  Perils  of 
the  Sea"  ;  a  series  of  dramas  to  which  the  ocean 
is  the  background.  How  original  they  are :  the 
subject  seen  so  individually  and  carving  itself  out 
in  the  artist's  imagination  with  such  incisive  force  ! 
Moreover,  what  wholesome  breadth  in  his  sym- 
pathy !  He  does  not,  like  Cottet,  the  eminent 
painter  of  the  fisherfolk  of  Brittany,  picture  the 
lives  of  his  people  as  darkened  by  the  pall  of 
an  irremediable  fatality.  He  paints  them  as 
strong  men  and  women,  fronting  with  strength 
the  vicissitudes  of  their  existence ;  a  point  of 
view  entirely  akin  to  his  own  strong  force  of  char- 
acter.    For  here  one  reaches  the  tap  root  of  his 


WINSLOW   HOMER  79 

power.  It  is  character :  a  personal  strength  ;  not 
of  the  complex  kind  that  diffuses  itself  over  many 
issues,  but  self-centred  and  direct.  It  is  the 
actuality  of  things  which  perpetually  seizes  his 
imagination  and  on  which  he  concentrates  for 
the  time  being  all  his  energy.  And,  surely,  it  is 
because  this  is  so  essentially  the  quality  of  present 
American  civilization  that  he  is  preeminently  the 
most  representative  of  American  painters.  He 
is  a  product  of  his  time,  has  sucked  nourishment 
from  it,  and  translated  its  nobler  quality  into 
terms  of  art. 

But  it  is  in  his  marines  that  he  seems  to  reach 
the  ripest  maturity  of  his  genius ;  and  most  com- 
pletely, perhaps,  in  the  "  Maine  Coast."  The 
human  import  of  the  ocean  has  spoken  home  to 
him  at  last,  in  its  least  local  significance.  This 
picture  involves  a  drama ;  but  the  players  are  the 
elements ;  the  text,  of  universal  language ;  the 
theme,  as  old  as  time.  With  the  enlargement 
of  purpose  has  come  a  corresponding  grandeur 
of  style ;  they  realize,  as  no  other  marines  with 
which  I  am  acquainted,  the  majesty,  isolation, 
immensity,  ponderous  movement  and  mystery  of 
the  ocean, 

"boundless,  endless,  and  sublime  — 
The  image  of  Eternity  —  the  throne 
Of  the  Invisible." 


80  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

—  They  seem  to  be  the  spontaneous  utterance  of 
a  soul  full  to  overflowing  with  the  magnitude  of 
its  thoughts. 

A  word  must  be  said  of  Homer's  skill  in  water 
colours.  They  have  the  quality  of  improvisation  ; 
snatches  of  impression,  flung  upon  the  paper  in 
the  ardour  of  the  moment;  tuneful  bits  of  move- 
ment and  colour,  gladsome  as  the  light  and  quick 
with  the  spirit  of  the  occasion  ;  and,  being  so  close 
to  their  author's  intention,  they  have  a  vigour  and 
directness  all  his  own. 


VI 

EDWIN   A.  ABBEY 


VI 

EDWIN  A.  ABBEY 

IT  was  but  yesterday,  though  in  this  country 
that  is  a  long  time  ago,  that  American  paint- 
ers with  the  zeal  of  the  neophyte  were  declaiming 
against  the  story-telling  picture.  Of  course,  we 
know  that  the  objection  was  well  taken  in  regard 
to  a  large  class  of  pictures,  wherein  the  story  was 
the  "  thing,"  the  way  of  telling  it  merely  inci- 
dental and  generally  banal.  But,  like  many  other 
good  principles  pushed  to  excess,  it  resulted  in  a 
bathos  as  complete  as  that  from  which  it  would 
have  saved  us.  Countless  canvases  have  been 
painted,  which  possess  no  human  interest  and  very 
little  artistic  justification ;  the  barren  issue  of  a 
mere  negation.  Slowly  there  is  coming  a  reaction, 
and  we  are  beginning  to  realize  that  a  painter  is 
none  the  less  an  artist  for  having  something  to 
say,  may  even  ultimately  depend  for  his  ranking 
as  an  artist  upon  the  quality  of  what  he  has  to 
say,  provided  always  that  he  says  it  in  true 
painter  fashion,  with  reliance,  in  fact,  upon  the 
vocabulary  of  his  own  particular  art. 

83 


84  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

Among  those  who  have  never  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  troubled  by  the  art-for-art's-sake 
grain  of  truth  in  a  bushel  of  chaff  is  Edwin  A. 
Abbey.  As  an  artist  he  must  largely  stand  or  fall 
upon  his  merit  as  a  teller  of  stories.  Have  his 
stories  been  intrinsically  interesting  ?  Is  his  way 
of  telling  them  artistic  ?  That  he  has  won  his 
way  from  a  stool  at  the  drawing  table  of  Harper 
and  Brothers  to  a  seat  in  the  Royal  Academy 
will  not  of  itself  convince  a  great  many  people, 
who  are  of  the  opinion  that  the  story-telling  pic- 
ture is  just  what  attracts  the  English  and  is  the 
bane  of  their  Academy.  So,  to  reach  an  accepta- 
ble estimate  of  Abbey's  rank  as  an  artist,  we  must 
confine  ourselves  strictly  to  the  character  of  his 
work,  both  in  pen  and  ink  and  in  paint. 

It  was  in  1871,  when  he  was  nineteen  years 
old,  that  he  passed  from  his  student  days  at  the 
Pennsylvania  Academy  of  the  Fine  Arts  into  the 
employment  of  the  Harpers,  becoming  one  of 
the  firm's  band  of  illustrators,  including,  among 
others,  Charles  S.  Reinhart,  Howard  Pyle,  Joseph 
Pennel,  and  Alfred  Parsons,  who  helped  to  draw 
attention  in  Europe  to  the  superiority  of  the 
chief  American  illustrated  monthlies.  In  1878 
came  his  first  great  opportunity,  when  he  was 
commissioned  to  illustrate  some  of  the  poems  of 
Heirick,  and,  in  search  of  material,  visited  Eng- 


EDWIN   A.  ABBEY  85 

land,  where,  except  for  a  few  short  visits  to  this 
country,  he  has  remained  ever  since.  He  betook 
himself  to  Stratford-on-Avon  and  Bidford,  and 
later  to  Broadway,  in  Worcestershire. 

Probably  every  true  artist  has  within  him  a 
little  world  of  his  own,  an  island  in  the  ocean  of 
the  world  around  him,  a  little  spot  of  fact,  on 
which  flourish  the  trees  and  flowers  and  person- 
ages of  his  imagination.  He  is  happy  if  circum- 
stances permit  him  to  work  in  it,  and  still  more 
happy  if  his  world  of  fancy  has  some  correspond- 
ence to  the  actual  world  about  him.  Such  was 
Abbey's  happiness  in  having  his  footsteps  directed 
through  rural  England.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
could  have  been  no  accident  that  put  it  in  his  way 
to  illustrate  an  old-time  poem.  The  whole  tenor 
of  his  subsequent  work,  since  he  has  been  at  lib- 
erty to  choose  his  own  subjects,  proves  that  the 
bias  of  his  temperament  is  toward  the  past :  to 
the  days  of  picturesque  costume,  to  a  period  re- 
mote enough  to  justify  his  fancy  in  selecting  what 
it  would,  and  ignoring  what  it  would  not.  Nor 
do  I  overlook  the  fact  that  Abbey  from  the  first 
has  shown  an  ability  to  create  from  within  him- 
self an  environment  for  his  conceptions.  Yet, 
even  so,  he  could  not  have  lighted  on  a  place 
more  fertilizing  to  such  a  temperament  than  the 
English  scenes  among  which  he  has  moved,  with 


86  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

their  old-time  associations  and  simple  rural  love- 
liness. 

Broadway,  for  instance,  is  on  the  old  post  road 
that  runs  from  London,  through  Oxford,  on  to 
Worcester  and  the  west ;  within  easy  reach  of 
Stratford  and  Kenilworth ;  its  nearest  station, 
Evesham,  an  old  market  town  where  Simon  de 
Montfort,  who  first  stood  up  for  Englishmen 
against  the  Norman  conquerors  and  for  the  rights 
of  the  common  people,  was  slain  in  battle.  As 
you  near  the  village  the  pleasant  vale  of  Evesham 
narrows  into  a  horseshoe  of  hills,  gentle  slopes  of 
verdure  intersected  with  hedges,  and  rimmed  with 
coppices  and  woods.  Millet's  house  is  at  the 
entrance ;  a  little  farther  on,  the  village  green  ;  and 
a  little  farther  still  a  fine  old  gabled  inn,  where 
Cromwell,  says  the  story,  slept  after  his  victory  at 
Worcester.  The  broad  street,  continually  mount- 
ing, passes  between  gabled  farmhouses,  buried  in 
ivy,  and  cottages  whose  windows  are  bright  with 
pot  geraniums  and  little  gardens  filled  with  the 
flowers  and  herbs  that  Ophelia  crooned  of;  past 
doorways  that  bear  the  date  of  that  first  James, 
"  the  moct  learned  fool  in  Christendom " ;  past 
the  remantled  farmstead  where  Mary  Anderson 
in  her  present  role  of  wife  and  mother  would 
fain  forget  that  she  has  been  a  star ;  till  it  winds 
up  in  a  thin  line  of  white  between  the  green  and 


EDWIN   A.   ABBEY  87 

brown,  and  vanishes  at  the  top  of  the  hill,  where 
beyond  the  mounds  and  hollows  of  a  Roman 
encampment  there  is  only  the  knowledge  of  a 
modern  world.  But  you  have  scarce  seen  Broad- 
way until  you  have  penetrated  into  some  of  the 
cottage  and  kitchen  interiors,  with  their  wide- 
open  hearths,  smoke-stained  timbered  ceilings, 
from  which  hang  hams  and  flitches  of  bacon  and 
strings  of  onions ;  or  passed  to  the  backs  of  some 
of  the  houses  and  explored  the  dairies  and  quaint 
inglenooks  of  architecture,  the  trim  vegetable 
gardens,  the  apple  orchards  and  the  barnyards, 
in  close  companionship  with  which  is  always  the 
vivid  green  of  the  pleasant  hills. 

And  it  was  in  such  places  that  Abbey  gathered 
material  for  his  illustrations  to  "Selections  from 
the  Hesperides "  and  "  Noble  Numbers "  of 
Robert  Herrick;  to  the  "Old  Songs"  and  "  She 
Stoops  to  Conquer  "  ;  a  spot  wherein  there  must 
have  been  so  much  akin  to  his  own  moods  of 
imagination.  What  wonder  that  his  drawings 
have  the  fragrance  of  apple  blossom  and  new- 
mown  hay,  the  sweet  musicalness  of  rippling 
brooks,  the  delicate  atmosphere  of  the  quiet  life, 
and  the  savour  of  the  old-time  spirit !  Within  the 
limits  of  their  particular  intention,  I  doubt  if  any 
drawings  are  more  perfect.  Nor  do  I  forget  those 
drawings  of  the  country  by  Alfred  Parsons,  made 


88  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

about  the  same  time  and  around  the  same  spots ; 
drawings  which  show  such  apprehension  of  the 
subtle  qualities  of  rural  beauty,  such  an  eye  for 
lovely  fragments,  such  a  sensitive  artistry  in  pic- 
turing them.  But  the  difference  in  the  work  of 
these  two  close  friends  throws  a  clear  light  on  the 
special  quality  of  Abbey's  mind.  Parsons  pic- 
tured what  he  saw,  interpreting  the  bit  of  nature  in 
daintiest  terms  of  art ;  while  Abbey  has  the  power 
of  calling  up  a  picture  in  his  imagination.  Yet 
in  these  drawings,  at  least,  there  is  not  an  act  of 
pure  imagination ;  for  the  text  of  the  poem  or 
play  supplies  the  idea.  His  skill  is  shown  in  the 
vivid  recreation  of  the  borrowed  theme ;  in  a  deli- 
cate tact  of  choice,  in  his  way  of  representing  it 
and  of  illuminating  it  with  a  few  choice  details, 
and  in  his  manner  of  setting  the  figures  and  ob- 
jects in  an  atmosphere  of  their  own.  And  I  am 
not  thinking  now  of  that  technical  accomplish- 
ment which  surrounds  the  figures  with  an  enve- 
lope of  lighted  air,  but  of  that  more  poetical  gift 
which  enables  him  to  recreate  the  impression  of 
the  old-time  feeling.  As  he  says  himself,  a  pic- 
ture of  bygone  manners  should  be  treated  as  an 
artist  of  its  own  period  might  have  treated  it. 
It  is  undoubtedly  Abbey's  faculty  of  borrowing 
the  habit  of  mind  as  well  as  of  manners  of  the  past 
that  gives  a  special  distinction  to  these  drawings. 


EDWIN   A.   ABBEY  89 

But  the  recognition  of  this  should  not  obscure 
the  larger  faculty  of  which  this  is  only  a  phase, 
of  being  able  to  illuminate  the  text ;  to  illustrate 
it  in  the  true  sense,  for  the  term  has  fallen  into 
discredit.  This  is  partly  the  fault  of  publishers 
who  are  apt  to  insist  on  the  most  literal  interpre- 
tation of  the  text,  instead  of  allowing  the  artist 
to  reinform  the  essence  of  the  text  with  the  spirit 
of  his  independent  art ;  and  partly,  no  doubt,  to 
the  inability  of  many  draughtsmen  to  do  more 
than  baldly  literalize.  Thus  we  have  a  perpetual 
crop  of  so-called  illustrations,  either  crowded  with 
detail  or  almost  flippantly  negligent  of  anything 
but  a  certain  loose  bravura  of  line  and  spacing, 
clever,  if  you  like,  but  tediously  similar  in  general 
character.  "She  rose  to  greet  him"  —  can  you 
not  predicate  with  tolerable  accuracy  how  such 
and  such  a  one  among  many  illustrators  would 
represent  the  incident?  In  Abbey's  case  you 
could  not.  The  phrase  would  formulate  in  his 
mind  a  picture ;  complete,  daintily  suggestive,  full 
of  the  charming  quality  of  unexpectedness.  But 
it  is  when  an  illustration  tries  to  enforce  the  text 
by  picturing  some  incident  of  prime  importance 
in  the  story,  with  its  play  of  passion,  perhaps, 
and  diverse  possibility  of  appeal  to  different 
minds,  that  the  effort  of  the  ordinary  illustrator 
is  so  hopelessly  jejune.     Such  subjects  are  only 


9o  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

partially  acceptable  when  one  like  Abbey  essays 
them.  Indeed,  many  of  us  may  have  felt  that 
where,  as  in  Shakespeare,  the  scene  is  one  of  very 
full  significance,  affecting  the  sensibility  of  differ- 
ent thoughtful  readers  as  diversely  as  the  same 
passage  of  music  will  affect  its  auditors  differently, 
one's  intelligence  and  power  of  appreciation  can 
hardly  be  satisfied  with  any  one  man's  crystalliz- 
ing of  such  fluidity  and  diversity  of  appeal  into 
a  fixed  presentment. 

Abbey's  illustrations  to  Shakespeare,  though  I 
know  they  are  considered  one  of  his  greatest 
triumphs,  have  seemed  to  me  to  mark  the  begin- 
ning of  less  perfection.  Again,  I  am  not  speak- 
ing of  the  craftsmanship,  but  of  the  spirit  that 
animates  the  artist.  So  long  as  he  confines  him- 
self to  fragments  from  the  scenes  and  to  subordi- 
nate persons,  or  to  those  whose  character  is  very 
simple  and  direct,  his  old  charm  remains ;  but 
when  he  attempts  a  complex  character,  as  that  of 
Portia,  he  necessarily  cannot  please  all  comers ; 
and  when  he  essays  to  build  up  scenes,  the  old 
spontaneity  of  imagination  seems  to  dwindle.  It 
is  as  if  the  foliage  of  a  tree  were  beginning  to  lose 
its  freshness  and  twinkle  of  artless  movement; 
as  if  by  degrees  the  leaves  were  losing  sap  and 
falling;  and  the  naked  boughs,  the  bare  con- 
struction  of  the  tree,  were   gradually   being  re- 


EDWIN  A.   ABBEY  91 

vealed.  And  in  Abbey's  case  it  seems  to  be  a 
process  that  has  been  going  on  more  and  more 
as  he  passed  to  the  use  of  paint  and  to  the  build- 
ing up  of  important  mise  en  scenes,  such  as  "  Ham- 
let," "Richard,  Duke  of  Gloucester,  and  the  Lady 
Anne,"  or  "  The  Penance  of  Eleanor,  Duchess  of 
Gloucester." 

His  passage  to  paint  was  but  a  question  of 
time ;  not  only  because  to  all  artists  it  seems  to 
offer  the  largest  scope,  but  because,  as  a  draughts- 
man, he  has  always  had  the  feeling  of  a  colourist. 
He  has  avoided  hardness  of  contours,  softening 
them  with  light  and  atmosphere,  and  merging  the 
figures  in  the  ensemble.  The  latter  are  not 
merely  set  against  a  background,  they  are  always 
in  and  part  of  the  picture.  Further,  he  sees  them 
as  masses.  You  will  scarcely  find  in  his  draw- 
ings authority  of  line,  or  fascination  in  the  direc- 
tion and  quality  of  the  line  as  line ;  instead,  an 
infinity  of  little  lines,  not  without  feeling,  doubt- 
less, but  without  a  separateness  of  aesthetic  value. 
It  is  in  the  mass  that  they  count;  so  that  a 
woman's  gown  will  not  afford  a  sweep  of  move- 
ment, but  a  delightful  tissue  of  lights  and  shadows. 
And  when  he  proceeds  to  colour  it  is  again  the 
mass  that  captivates  him  —  masses,  especially  of 
black,  of  crimson  and  white.  But  with  this  very 
marked  love  for  colour,  he  is  not  a  colourist  in  the 


92  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

sense  of  weaving  harmonies  of  colour.  His  pic- 
tures are  still  a  balancing  of  masses  rather  than 
an  effect  of  orchestration  ;  and  in  the  voluminous 
draperies  that  he  introduces,  while  there  is  much 
influence  of  the  amplitude  of  Venetian  painting, 
there  is  little  of  its  love  of  light  or  bigness  of 
architectonic  use  of  colour.  In  his  treatment  of 
coloured  masses  he  is  nearer  to  the  manner  of  Hol- 
bein or  Van  Eyck.  He  does  not  seem  to  have 
an  antecedent  realization  of  the  structure  of  his 
colour  scheme,  but  builds  it  bit  by  bit,  and  the 
units  more  or  less  retain  their  separateness.  Yet, 
while  there  is  a  lack  of  breadth  in  the  picture  as 
a  whole,  the  parts  are  broadly  treated,  and  often 
with  a  fine  freedom  of  stroke.  In  his  earlier 
paintings,  such  as  the  "  Pavane,"  belonging  to 
Mr.  Whitelaw  Reid,  he  was  still  drawing  with 
his  brush,  but  in  his  later  ones  the  manner  has 
become  a  painter's. 

But  no  less  natural  than  this  progress  of  his 
technical  evolution  has  been  that  of  his  mental 
one.  In  the  course  of  this  how  could  he  well 
escape  the  Shakespeare  cycle ;  not  only  because 
he  had  begun  by  interpreting  old  English  poems 
and  plays,  and  it  was  only  a  question  of  time  as 
to  when  he  would  feel  the  influence  of  the  poet- 
dramatist,  but  also  because  his  imagination  is  of 
the  dramatic  kind.     He  would  have  made  an  ideal 


EDWIN   A.   ABBEY  93 

stage  manager  of  the  highest  type.  As  I  have 
said,  it  is  less  by  any  originality  of  conception  that 
his  imagination  is  distinguished  than  by  an  apti- 
tude for  grasping  the  thought  of  another,  recloth- 
ing  it  with  actuality,  setting  it  in  its  appropriate 
environment,  and  making  it  breathe  again  with  the 
spirit  of  its  time.  But  such  a  gift,  on  the  stage 
at  least,  is  rarely,  if  ever,  accompanied  by  personal 
histrionic  ability.  It  is  a  gift,  of  selecting,  assem- 
bling, and  combining,  rather  than  of  absorption 
of  self  in  a  given  line  of  motive.  The  stage 
manager  gives  the  appearance  of  life  to  a  scene, 
the  actor  makes  it  live,  and  I  wonder  whether  it 
be  not  true  that  in  these  Shakespearian  canvases 
of  Abbey's  and  in  his  mural  decorations  of  the 
Holy  Grail  in  the  Boston  Public  Library  there  is 
a  marshalling  of  the  scene  without  the  dramatic 
force.  Do  they  carry  us  away  and  fill  us  with  the 
emotion  that  we  should  receive  in  presence  of  the 
play  well  acted  on  the  stage  or  in  the  reading  of 
the  legend  intelligently  ?  We  find  ourselves,  I 
believe,  rather  studying  the  parts  of  those  elabo- 
rate productions,  the  accuracy  and  beauty  of  detail, 
admiring  the  manipulative  ability  that  has  collected 
and  coordinated,  and  waiting,  meanwhile,  for  the 
drama  to  begin. 

And  if  this  is  true,  may  it  not  be  the  result 
of  choosing  for  pictorial  representation  a  subject 


94  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

of  such  complex  emotions  as  the  player's  scene 
in  "  Hamlet,"  or  one  of  such  almost  inexpli- 
cable subtlety  as  Richard's  love  advances  to 
Anne  as  she  follows  in  the  funeral  procession  of 
her  dead  husband,  or  even  one  of  comparatively 
directer  significance  as  that  of  "  The  Penance  of 
Eleanor"?  In  his  last  picture,  the  "Triai  of 
Queen  Katherine,"  he  has  not  attempted  to  por- 
tray the  climax  of  the  scene,  but  the  first  pathetic 
pleading  of  the  "  most  poor  woman."  Surely  he 
did  well  to  seize  for  representation  this  interme- 
diate movement  in  the  scene.  He  has  gained 
thereby  our  human  sympathy  for  a  subject  which 
might  easily  have  been  too  complicated  with 
highly  strung  emotions  to  be  immediately  intel- 
ligible. And  it  is  one  of  the  merits  of  this  pic- 
ture that  its  appeal  is  not  only  impressive  but 
immediate.  He  has  exhibited  a  tactful  modesty, 
and  I  use  the  word  with  a  thought  of  its  real  mean- 
ing, which  is  something  choicer  than  moderation. 
He  might  have  attempted  a  more  heroic  note, 
pitched  it  to  the  extreme  possibility  of  the  scene. 
But  he  avoids  a  tour  de  force ;  and  draws  us  as 
much  by  persuasion  as  by  strength ;  by  the 
strength,  in  fact,  of  what  he  holds  in  reserve. 
For  the  peculiar  qualities  of  his  strength  are 
quietness  and  depth.  One  may  find  it  in  "  The 
Jongleur,"  where  coming  from  the  castle  gate, 


EDWIN  A.   ABBEY  95 

flanked  on  each  side  by  a  sheltering  range  of 
roof,  cheerless  outside,  but  suggesting  cheer 
within,  across  the  waste  of  snow  the  man  in  mot- 
ley's solitary  figure  is  seen,  wincing  as  he  faces  the 
cold  and  touching  a  strain  on  his  mandolin  to 
keep  up  his  spirits.  It  is  a  beautiful  picture,  full 
of  significant  suggestion,  not  only  of  the  imme- 
diate incident,  but  of  the  pathos  of  the  life  which 
lives  to  amuse  others  and  of  the  emptiness  of  the 
world  for  one  whose  spirit  is  apart  from  it.  It 
is  a  picture  that  compares  in  spontaneousness  of 
expression  with  the  earlier  drawings,  and  has  the 
fuller  import  of  a  maturer  mind.  Surely  it  is 
along  lines  such  as  this  of  purer  imagination  that 
Abbey  will  find  his  truest  self. 

To  his  decorations  at  the  Boston  Public  Library 
much  of  what  one  has  said  of  the  Shakespeare 
paintings  is  applicable.  They  are  not  dramatic; 
their  impressiveness  is  of  a  quiet  and  tempered 
sort.  As  one  becomes  familiar  with  these  pic- 
tures, their  power  to  make  one  feel  the  reason- 
ableness and  the  beauty  of  the  old  thought ;  to 
feel  it,  too,  not  as  something  entirely  strange,  but 
as  of  present  interest,  grows  and  grows  upon  one. 
The  intellect  that  has  conceived  them  is  not  of 
the  kind  that  leaps  to  an  inspired  result.  Its 
quality  is  choiceness  and  delicacy  of  imaginative- 
ness that  wins  us  by  persuasion. 


96  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

In  these  pictures,  as  generally  in  his  others,  it 
is  the  women  that  he  introduces  who  are  the 
most  captivating  features  of  the  conception. 
How  beautiful  they  are !  The  alluring  purity 
of  expression,  for  example,  in  the  faces  of  the 
Virtues  is  irresistible.  Their  heads,  fragrantly 
pure,  sway  like  a  row  of  lilies  in  a  gentle  wind. 
Their  motionless  bodies  are  arrayed  in  costumes 
of  delicate  richness,  each  one  of  which  is  differ- 
ently exquisite ;  the  expression  is  mostly  signified 
by  movement  of  the  hands  and  head ;  along  the 
line  there  is  a  simultaneous  act  of  unveiling, 
diversified  by  separate  traits  of  modesty.  Per- 
haps the  most  captivating  of  all  the  figures  is  that 
of  the  one  who  holds  the  young  knight's  left 
hand.  She  draws  back  and  yields  at  the  same 
moment,  with  a  gesture  in  which  there  is  a  most 
subtle  mingling  of  confidence  and  hesitation. 
The  touch  of  man  is  so  new  to  her,  yet  who  may 
doubt  this  youth  ? 

One  of  the  gems  of  the  whole  series  is  the 
representation  of  Blanchefleur,  sitting  in  her 
dove-gray  wedding  gown ;  rose-wreathed  and 
holding  roses  in  her  lap ;  gazing  before  her  with 
a  look  of  surrender,  so  infinitely  spiritual.  In 
her  as  in  the  Virtues  the  painter  has  made  purity 
adorable ;  neither  ascetic  nor  ecstatic,  not  at 
variance  with  the  humanity  of  womanhood,  but 


EDWIN  A.   ABBEY  97 

represented  as  its  choicest  flowering.  Again,  in 
his  rendering  of  the  angels  he  helps  us  to  realize 
that  they  are  creatures  of  the  imagination ;  espe- 
cially in  the  last  picture,  where  their  form  is 
vague  and  they  are  felt  rather  as  presences.  And 
to  this  detachment  from  mere  humanity  spiritual- 
ized corresponds  the  expression  of  their  faces ; 
the  rapt  adoration  of  beings  raised  above  the 
stir  of  human  passion,  in  an  atmosphere  of  calm 
where  passivity  is  action. 

However,  judged  as  a  series  of  decorations, 
following  around  the  frieze  of  a  room,  these  pic- 
tures are  less  satisfactory.  They  count  as  units, 
rather  than  in  progression.  One  fails  to  find  a 
rhythmic  continuity  or  periodic  emphasis  of 
movement  and  colour,  they  vary  conspicuously  in 
size  and  colour  and  in  character  of  composition 
and  motive,  and  make  their  impression  separately, 
instead  of  being  in  consecutive  accord. 

But  if  from  a  decorative  standpoint  these 
canvases  are  open  to  adverse  criticism,  let  it  not 
divert  attention  from  their  essential  merit.  Such 
big  and  serious  effort  is  none  too  usual  in  paint- 
ing—  the  opportunity  for  it,  one  must  add  in 
fairness,  too  infrequently  occurs  —  so  that,  when 
one  meets  it,  one's  heart  goes  out  in  appreciative 
acknowledgment.  Within  the  scope  of  Abbey's 
primary   intention    of   commemorating    a    great 


98  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

theme  in  a  series  of  noble  pictures  and  of  re^ 
investing  old  truth  with  present  force,  he  has 
achieved  a  triumph  that  will  win  the  admiration 
of  all  to  whom  seriously  imaginative  work  ap- 
peals. 


VII 
GEORGE    FULLER 


VII 
GEORGE   FULLER 

WHEN  Fortune  is  apportioning  qualities  to 
the  artistic  temperament,  she  does  not 
always  include  character.  I  mean  that  unflinch- 
ing rectitude  of  purpose  which  at  once  answers 
"  Adsum  !  "  to  the  call  of  duty,  and  is  not  of  the 
kind  that  says,  "  *  I  go,  sir,'  and  went  not."  Sac- 
rifice to  the  call  of  art  is  by  comparison  a  slen- 
derer quality.  It  is  not  so  difficult  to  suffer  for 
the  sake  of  an  ideal,  especially  when  a  man  is 
young,  or  even  when  he  is  old,  if  he  keeps  his 
heart  young  within  him,  a  faculty  which  is  often 
rather  an  incident  of  the  artistic  temperament  than 
a  matter  of  personal  effort.  But  sacrifice  to  the 
call  of  duty,  a  duty  outside  of  the  art  ideals,  rep- 
resents a  much  higher  quality,  demanding  the 
exercise  of  personal  force  and  the  maintenance  of 
a  quite  unusual  endurance ;  the  quality,  in  fact, 
which  one  sums  up  as  character. 

This  is  one  clew  to  the  reading  of  George  Fuller's 
life  as  an  artist ;  that,  at  the  call  of  what  seemed 
to  him  to  be  his  duty,  he  gave  up  the  single- 


102  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

aimed  pursuit  of  the  treasure  where  his  heart  lay ; 
disregarded,  as  the  world  would  say,  the  chances 
of  a  lifetime  for  the  dull  monotony  of  a  life  of 
arduous  routine,  and  yet,  despite  the  sacrifice,  more 
probably  because  of  it,  found  his  ideal  after  all. 
But  there  is  another  clew.  Fuller's  ideal  and  his 
craving  after  artistic  expression  were  bone  of  his 
bone,  flesh  of  his  flesh,  an  integral,  inseparable 
part  of  himself.  They  did  not  need  stimulating 
any  more  than  a  healthy  appetite,  were  so  nor- 
mally a  part  of  him  as  to  preserve  their  natural 
functions  under  any  circumstances  of  life.  This 
is  not  the  way  in  which  artistic  proclivities  always 
reveal  themselves.  In  some  cases  the  art  instinct 
is  not  dissimilar  to  a  taste  in  waistcoats ;  double- 
breasted  to-day,  to-morrow,  single  ;  sprigged,  plain, 
coloured,  sober,  to  meet  the  occasions  of  the  mo- 
ment ;  put  off  as  easily  as  put  on ;  a  habit  rather 
than  an  instinct.  This  is  the  trivial,  masquerad- 
ing side  of  art,  so  detestable  in  a  solid  world  of 
facts  ;  a  conscienceless  sniffing  of  the  air  for  change 
of  fashion,  that  reminds  one  of  the  jackdaw  with  a 
few  peacock  feathers  in  his  tail,  strutting  around 
and  trying  to  deceive  us  into  recognizing  his  supe- 
riority to  fowls  of  ordinary  degree.  I  doubt  if 
the  true  artist  ever  humbled  himself  to  proclaim 
his  worth,  and  nothing  more  proclaims  his  worth 
than  his  beautiful  humility.     It  was  so,  I  am  sure 


GEORGE   FULLER  103 

we  may  believe,  in  Fuller's  case.  He  was  not 
even  conscious  of  his  power  in  the  way  that 
smaller  men  of  less  character  are :  only  conscious 
of  something  that  he  longed  to  do  and  would  do 
in  time,  if  life  were  spared,  notwithstanding  the 
claims  upon  his  attention  of  other  and  more  mun- 
dane matters.  The  beauty  of  such  a  process  of 
evolution  is  all  from  within :  natural,  like  the 
bursting  of  the  honeysuckle  into  fragrance  and 
blossom  over  waste,  dry  places ;  not  to  be  judged 
by  what  it  might  have  been  in  other  soil  and  cli- 
mate, but  fulfilling  its  special  function  of  beauty 
through  the  inherent  mystery  of  its  own  inde- 
pendent force. 

The  product  of  good  New  England  stock, 
George  Fuller  was  born  at  Deerfield,  Mass.,  in 
1822,  his  father  being  a  farmer  and  his  mother 
the  daughter  of  a  lawyer.  At  thirteen  years  he 
was  taken  to  Boston  and  put  first  into  a  grocery 
and  later  into  a  shoe  store,  but  only  for  a  short 
time,  soon  returning  to  the  home  farm  and  resum- 
ing his  studies  at  the  country  school.  Already  he 
had  displayed  a  taste  and  aptitude  for  drawing. 
When  fifteen,  he  joined  an  expedition  to  Illinois 
that  was  engaged  in  making  surveys  for  the  first 
railway  in  the  state,  and  then  again,  after  two 
years,  returned  to  school  at  Deerfield.  It  soon 
became  evident  that  the  youth  had  more  leanings 


104  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

toward  art  than  business,  and  he  was  allowed  to 
accompany  his  half-brother  Augustus,  a  deaf  mute 
who  painted  miniatures,  in  a  ramble  through  the 
smaller  towns  of  New  York  State,  executing  por- 
traits at  fifteen  dollars  apiece.  How  much  of 
simple  romance  there  was  in  these  beginnings  :  the 
early  influence  of  the  hill  life,  for  Deerfield  is  a 
village  among  the  hills  ;  the  wider  freedom  on  the 
western  prairies ;  and  the  roaming  from  place  to 
place  with  paint  box  and  wallet,  light  of  heart  and 
heel !  All  these  influences  tended  toward  inde- 
pendence, self-reliance,  and  wholesomeness  of 
mind,  to  the  natural  and  firm  upbuilding  of  the 
individuality  in  himself,  before  he  came  in  con- 
tact with  influences  directly  artistic.  He  was  fortu- 
nate, also,  in  his  early  friendship  with  artists  of  so 
fine  a  quality  of  mind  and  beautiful  personal  char- 
acter as  the  sculptors  Henry  Kirke  Brown  and 
Thomas  Ball.  The  former,  eight  years  his  senior, 
invited  him  to  his  studio  in  Albany,  where  he 
studied  drawing  for  nine  months,  until  Brown  and 
his  wife  went  to  Europe.  Then  he  spent  the 
winters  of  1 842  and  1 843  in  Boston,  returning  to 
Deerfield  each  summer.  In  the  latter  year,  hav- 
ing been  elected  a  member  of  the  Boston  Artists' 
Association,  he  wrote  to  Brown,  who  was  then  in 
Rome,  "  I  have  concluded  to  see  nature  for  my- 
self, through  the  eye  of  no  one  else,  and  put  my 


GEORGE   FULLER  105 

trust  in  God,  awaiting  the  result."  It  is  just  such 
simple-souled,  reliant  men  who  can  possess  their 
souls  with  patience  and  reach  their  end  by  waiting. 
In  these  early  days  at  Boston,  during  part  of 
which  he  shared  a  studio  with  Thomas  Ball,  he 
was  painting  portraits  ;  but  in  1 846,  the  year  after 
his  mother's  death,  he  sold  his  first  imaginative 
picture,  "  A  Nun  at  Confession,"  to  a  patron  in 
Pittsfield,  Mass.,  for  six  dollars  !  In  the  follow- 
ing year  he  moved  to  New  York  at  the  solicita- 
tion of  his  friend  Brown,  who  had  returned  home, 
eager  to  devote  the  experience  he  had  gained 
abroad  to  the  representation  of  American  subjects 
in  America.  During  the  ten  years  which  followed 
of  study  and  work  in  New  York,  varied  with  visits 
to  Philadelphia  and  the  South,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
trace  the  effect  of  Brown's  influence  upon  his  ear- 
nest friend.  One  result  of  it  was  to  prepare  the 
latter  for  his  own  visit  to  Europe ;  to  open  his 
understanding  beforehand  to  the  wonders  that  he 
was  to  see,  and  at  the  same  time  to  habituate  him 
to  an  attitude  of  study,  which  would  enable  him 
to  receive  the  technical  lessons  of  the  various 
schools  and  their  stimulus  to  the  imagination 
without  being  lost  in  the  wealth  of  impressions  or 
unduly  influenced  by  any  one  of  them.  The  op- 
portunity to  visit  Europe  came  in  1859,  when,  at 
an  interval  of  only  a  few  months,  both  his  elder 


io6  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

brother  and  father  died,  so  that  the  duty  of  caring 
for  the  farm  and  for  those  left  dependent  upon  it 
fell  to  him.  But  before  settling  down  he  made  a 
tour  of  five  months,  visiting  London,  —  where  he 
met  Rossetti  and  Holman  Hunt,  —  Paris,  and  the 
chief  cities  of  Italy,  Germany,  Belgium,  and  Hol- 
land ;  making  sketches  in  the  galleries,  and  find- 
ing especial  delight  in  Titian,  Tintoretto,  Veronese, 
Rubens,  Velasquez,  Rembrandt,  Correggio,  and 
Murillo,  apparently  with  a  particular  admiration 
for  the  colourists. 

An  infinite  pathos,  we  may  feel,  gathers  over 
this  visit,  affording,  as  it  did,  a  view  of  the 
Promised  Land  to  a  pilgrim  whose  steps  were 
so  peremptorily  recalled  to  the  hard  routine  of 
the  far-off  hill  farm ;  a  first  meeting  with  the 
lady  of  his  imagination  in  her  full  glory  at  the 
moment  when  he  found  himself  compelled  to 
forego  entire  allegiance  ;  a  brief  vision  of  the  ideal 
before  setting  his  hand  to  the  prosaic  reality  of 
life.  Yet,  perhaps,  to  feel  this  is  to  misread  the 
nobility  of  Fuller's  character.  To  him,  we  may 
believe,  there  was  a  fuller,  more  rounded  compre- 
hension of  beauty  in  life,  manifested  simply  in 
the  living  of  it  well  with  hands  and  back  and 
brain  as  well  as  with  the  subtler  forces  of  the 
imagination ;  that  in  this  big  organic  beauty, 
the  beauty  of  art  might  be  a  fly  wheel,  but  still 


GEORGE   FULLER 


107 


was  only  a  part  of  the  beautiful  whole.  So  what 
seems  to  us  such  a  tremendous  sacrifice,  to  him 
may  have  been  assuaged  by  the  satisfaction  of 
having  the  method  in  which  his  life  should  be 
lived  so  clearly  set  before  him ;  and  in  this  read- 
ing of  his  mind  one  pays,  perhaps,  the  most 
honourable  tribute  to  his  character. 

For  fifteen  years  no  picture  by  him  was  seen 
at  the  exhibitions,  and  only  a  few  intimate  friends 
knew  that  he  still  painted  in  the  intervals  of  farm 
labour ;  at  first  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  his  home, 
and  later  in  an  old  carriage  house,  converted  into 
a  studio.  His  subjects  were  elaborations  of  the 
sketches  made  in  Europe,  small  landscapes,  and 
portraits  of  his  children,  relatives,  and  friends ; 
often  never  finished,  sometimes  destroyed  because 
they  did  not  reach  what  he  desired.  Meanwhile 
his  work  on  the  farm  was  successful ;  many  im- 
provements were  carried  out,  and  tobacco  culture 
was  introduced  with  good  results,  until  the  fall 
of  prices  in  1875.  This  forced  him  into  bank- 
ruptcy and  restored  him  to  art.  During  the 
ensuing  winter  he  finished  twelve  canvases,  which 
were  exhibited  at  Boston,  meeting  with  hearty 
praise  and  a  ready  sale.  In  1878  appeared  at 
the  exhibition  of  the  National  Academy  "  By  the 
Wayside"  and  "The  Turkey  Pasture  in  Ken- 
tucky," followed  in   succeeding   years  by  "The 


108  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

Romany  Girl,"  "  And  She  was  a  Witch/'  "  The 
Quadroon,"  and  "Winifred  Dysart."  Being 
elected  a  member  of  the  Society  of  American  Art- 
ists, he  sent  to  its  exhibitions  "  Evening  —  Lorette, 
Canada,"  "  Priscilla  Fauntleroy,"  and  "  Nydia." 
Among  his  other  works,  exclusive  of  numerous 
portraits,  especially  of  ladies  and  children,  were 
"  Psyche,"  "  The  Bird  Catcher,"  "  Girl  and  Calf," 
"  Fedalma,"  and  "  Arethusa,"  the  last  named 
being  his  single  example  of  the  nude.  But  this 
rich  aftermath  of  creative  work  was  all  too  short, 
lasting  only  eight  years,  for  George  Fuller  died 
after  a  brief  illness  in  March,  1884.  He  was 
buried  at  Deerfield,  and  a  few  weeks  later  a  memo- 
rial exhibition  was  held  in  Boston  comprising 
175  paintings:  an  almost  complete  r'esum'e  of 
what  existed  of  his  art  work,  produced  through 
forty  years.  Two  years  later  the  house  of  Hough- 
ton, Mifflin  &  Co.  published  a  sumptuous  memo- 
rial volume,  containing  appreciations  by  W.  D. 
Howells,  Frank  D.  Millet,  Thomas  Ball,  W.  J. 
Stillman,  and  J.  J.  Enneking ;  a  sonnet  by  Whit- 
tier,  and  engravings  by  Closson,  Kruell,  and  Cole. 
It  is  useless  to  speculate  upon  what  might  have 
been  if  Fuller's  productivity  had  not  been  inter- 
rupted by  those  fifteen  years  upon  the  farm ;  but 
when  he  emerged  from  them  it  was  with  a  style 
of  painting  very   different  from    his   early   one. 


GEORGE   FULLER  109 

That  had  been  hard  in  outline,  minute  and  care- 
ful in  finish  ;  now  it  was  immersed  in  atmosphere, 
tenderly  elusive,  quietly  luminous,  a  revery  of 
colour,  reticently  harmonious.  It  was  no  longer 
the  work  of  an  observation  intent  upon  the  outer 
world,  but  the  outpouring  of  his  innermost  spirit, 
mellowed,  chastened,  become  contemplative  by 
time.  One  may  believe  that  the  outer  world  had 
become  more  and  more  identified  with  the  neces- 
sities of  his  life,  from  which  he  sought  a  refuge 
within  himself  in  his  own  dreams  of  spiritual 
beauty.  For  the  names  of  his  pictures  count  as 
little  as  the  subjects.  In  all  his  best,  notably  in 
the  "  Winifred  Dysart,"  "  Nydia,"  "  The  Quad- 
roon," and  in  "  The  Romany  Girl,"  especially 
that  example  of  the  latter  owned  by  J.  J.  Enne- 
king,  he  is  not  concerned  with  portraying  the  indi- 
vidual but  a  type,  and  in  giving  to  it  especially  a 
significance  of  spirit,  investing  it  in  each  case  with 
phases  of  what  he  had  learned  to  realize  as  the 
spiritual  quality  of  rarest,  subtlest  beauty.  How 
could  the  essential  fragrance  and  indefinable  love- 
liness of  maiden  innocence  as  it  appealed  to  the 
matured  sympathies  of  his  advanced  years  be  ex- 
pressed otherwise  than  he  had  felt  it,  —  veiled  in 
the  romance  of  shadowed  light,  a  thing  too  rarely 
delicate  for  sharp,  decisive  handling  ?  And  yet  be- 
neath this  tender  suggestiveness  of  method,  what 


no  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

strong  brush  work  is  discernible!  Not  clever, 
truly,  or  facile  and  masterful ;  rather  plodding, 
ay,  tentative,  as  of  compressed  emotion  striving 
patiently  for  expression.  One  has  seen  a  dreamy, 
tender  treatment  of  the  female  form,  which  had 
no  such  staunch  underlying  structure  to  support 
it,  work  which  attracts  by  what  we  hastily  style 
subtlety,  and  later  find  to  be  but  an  exquisite 
veneer  to  an  unstable  conception ;  the  artistic 
affectation  of  men  whose  coarseness  of  character 
belies  the  exquisiteness,  and,  as  one  studies  their 
pictures  longer,  leaves  us  unconvinced  of  their 
sincerity.  But  in  the  purity  of  Fuller's  concep- 
tions the  man  himself  and  his  deliberate,  habitual 
conviction  are  embodied. 

It  is  a  remarkable  feature  of  Fuller's  develop- 
ment that  whereas  in  age  he  belonged  to  the 
earlier  generation  of  American  painters,  he  should 
have  emerged  from  his  fifteen  years'  retreat  and 
unaided  communing  with  himself  more  truly 
modern  in  feeling  than  the  younger  men  who 
were  then  returning  from  Paris.  By  very  differ- 
ent ways  he  had  reached  an  ideal  not  dissimilar 
to  Whistler's ;  not,  to  be  sure,  expressed  with  the 
latter's  inimitable,  because  so  personal,  finesse,  but 
alike  in  its  devotion  to  the  abstract  and  in  realiza- 
tion of  the  correspondence  between  painting  and 
music,  and  not  so  unlike  in  its  method  of  expres- 


GEORGE   FULLER  in 

sion,  so  reticent  and  mysterious.  Fuller  also 
anticipated  the  motives  of  the  still  younger  man, 
such  as  Le  Sidaner  and  Duhem,  to  whom  the 
inherent  spirituality  of  the  landscape  or  figure  is 
the  absorbing  search,  which  they  seek  to  embody 
in  terms  as  intangible  as  possible.  Wrapt  from 
all  contact  with  the  distractions  of  the  art  world, 
he  had  with  the  prescience  of  sincerity  put  forth 
his  hand  toward  the  most  interesting  phase  of  the 
latest  movements.  I  mean  the  search  for  the 
significance  of  things,  as  of  higher  and  more  abid- 
ing value  than  the  things  themselves. 

Fuller's  life  was  a  romance  of  more  than  usual 
human  import,  characterized  by  a  singular  unity 
of  purpose.  He  is  not  to  be  considered,  on  the 
one  hand  as  a  man,  and  on  the  other  as  an  artist, 
with  qualities,  as  is  not  unusual,  respectively  dis- 
similar and  conflicting.  His  art  was  of  himself, 
truly  an  ingredient,  nourished,  disciplined,  chas- 
tened, always  sweetly  wholesome,  modest  and 
noble,  like  his  life.  He  lived  the  latter  well, 
and  in  this  high  ideal  of  manhooa  realized  the 
ideal  of  his  art. 


VIII 
HOMER    D.    MARTIN 


VIII 

HOMER   D.   MARTIN 

HOMER  D.  MARTIN  has  been  called  the 
first  of  American  impressionists  —  doubt- 
less not  with  reference  to  his  manner  of  painting, 
but  to  the  way  in  which  he  formulated  his  concep- 
tion of  the  landscape.  He  was  not  concerned  so 
much  with  its  obvious  phenomena  as  with  the 
impression  that  it  aroused  in  his  own  imagination. 

The  distinction  is  a  very  general  one.  Every- 
where there  are  those  to  whom  the  obvious  appeals 
with  undisturbed  frankness  ;  they  have  an  instinct 
for  facts,  and  for  confronting  them  singly  and 
directly ;  always,  too,  there  are  others  to  whom 
the  facts  are  but  a  basis  of  suggestion.  A  lamp- 
post on  the  sidewalk  implies  another  one  beyond, 
still  others  farther  on,  and  on  and  on ;  and,  by 
inference,  the  endless  footsteps  in  both  directions, 
passing  and  repassing. 

Martin's  earliest  study,  as  a  young  man  at 
Albany,  was  with  William  Hart,  a  literalist  of 
very  engaging  qualities.  Hart  was  faithful  to  the 
forms  of  nature,  as  every  true  landscapist  is,  and 


n6  AMERICAN    MASTERS 

dwelt  upon  the  details  of  the  scene  with  a  linger- 
ing appreciation  that  did  not,  however,  prevent 
him  from  coordinating  them  into  a  very  charm- 
ing ensemble.  But  his  joy  in  the  latter  was  of 
the  obvious  kind,  such  as  any  intelligent  lover 
of  the  country  shares ;  a  joy  in  the  pleasantness 
of  generous  pastures,  dotted  with  cattle,  and  per- 
vaded with  a  quiet  prosperity ;  in  the  smiling 
sunshine  and  grateful  shade,  in  cosey  woodland 
retreats,  that  a  man  might  seek  in  order  to  bury 
himself  in  the  attractions  of  a  book.  Always  it 
was  the  domestic  happiness  of  the  country  side 
that  won  him,  much,  indeed,  as  it  won  Daubigny ; 
for  such  choice  of  subject  is  not  a  consequence  of 
a  painter's  particular  way  of  painting,  but  of  his 
temperament.  The  much  or  little  of  suggestion 
that  he  receives  from  the  landscape,  the  quality 
of  personal  feeling  that  he  puts  into  his  pictures, 
depend  upon  his  character  as  a  man ;  and  the 
loyalty  with  which  he  follows  his  own  true  bias 
determines  very  largely  the  value  of  his  work. 
Certainly  this  is  a  truism,  and  yet  how  often  it  is 
ignored ;  painters  and  amateurs  establishing,  each 
for  himself,  some  particular  basis  of  appreciation. 

For  example,  to  look  for  poetic  quality  in  a 
landscape  picture  has  become  with  many  an 
axiom  of  standard,  and  they  find  its  expression 
chiefly  in  the  manner  of  tone.      So  they  have 


HOMER   D.   MARTIN  117 

no  eyes  for  one  of  Monet's  naturalistic  studies ; 
its  subtle  fidelity  to  a  phase  of  nature  does  not 
interest  them.  He  has  found  the  truth  of  nature 
to  be  enough  for  his  own  enjoyment,  and  as  he 
has  striven  to  make  nature  speak  direct  through 
his  picture  without  any  promptings  to  sentiment 
on  his  own  part,  they  miss  the  suggestion  of  some 
special  sentiment  such  as  another  painter  will  en- 
force, and  find  Monet  unintelligible ;  much  the 
same,  presumably,  as  nature  itself  would  be  to  them 
a  sealed  book.  The  text  to  them  is  unsuggestive  ; 
they  need  a  commentator.  And  how  scarce  good 
commentators  are !  The  vogue  of  poetic  land- 
scape has  called  into  activity  many  whose  senti- 
ment is  merest  sentimentality ;  minor  poets  of 
the  brush  with  a  pretty  knack  of  tone  and  tender- 
ness that  passes  for  poeticalness.  It  is  necessary 
to  clear  the  air  of  any  such  mild  pretence  of  poetry 
before  venturing  to  speak  of  Homer  Martin  as 
essentially  the  most  poetic  of  all  American  land- 
scape painters. 

It  has  been  said  that  there  is  a  Homeric  quality 
in  his  landscapes.  Clearly  this  is  no  attempt  to 
place  him  in  relation  to  other  painters,  as  we 
regard  Homer  among  other  poets;  but  is  a  refer- 
ence to  the  big  significance  of  his  work,  to  those 
elemental  qualities  which  we  habitually  associate 
with   the   poetry   of  Homer.      The    bigness    of 


n8  AMERICAN    MASTERS 

Martin  was  principally  that  of  a  big  intellect. 
It  had  its  inner  shrine,  where  he  kept  to  him- 
self the  sacredness  of  his  deepest  artistic  inspi- 
ration ;  an  outer  court,  wherein  he  mingled  with 
other  men  of  intellect,  and  its  sunny  entrance 
steps,  where,  beyond  the  shadow  of  what  was 
to  him  most  real,  he  could  prove  himself  to  be 
"  a  fellow  of  infinite  jest,"  a  brilliant  raconteur, 
one  that  all  who  knew  him  loved.  And  the  love 
for  Martin  one  finds  to  have  been  greatest  among 
those  who  knew  him  best,  and  were  most  aware 
of  the  deeper  qualities  that  underlay  his  wit  and 
jollity. 

There  is,  indeed,  a  rare  attractiveness  in  this 
combination  of  depth  and  brilliant  surface.  It 
is  so  easy  to  take  life  seriously  or  hilariously, 
if  one  is  formed  that  way;  but  to  be  big  with 
seriousness  in  season,  and  big  with  sportiveness 
betimes,  is  the  quality  of  an  extra  large-souled 
man.  Of  a  man,  indeed ;  for  the  quality  is  essen- 
tially a  masculine  one,  and  rare  even  among  men, 
particularly  in  art,  so  large  a  portion  of  which  is 
feminine  in  significance.  I  suppose  most  of  us 
feel  this  in  comparing,  for  example,  Tennyson 
with  Browning ;  and,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
have  had  a  feeling  of  it  in  the  presence  of  many 
pictures,  even  by  acknowledged  masters.  Not 
improbably  it  is  the  latent  reason  of  so  much 


HOMER   D.   MARTIN  119 

indifference  toward  pictures  in  this  country  by 
persons  otherwise  cultivated.  Our  past  history, 
as  well  as  the  immediate  present,  has  demanded 
qualities  essentially  masculine,  and  so  many  peo- 
ple instinctively  suspect  the  superabundance  of 
the  feminine  in  painting,  or  have  regarded  it 
merely  as  a  pastime  on  the  part  of  the  painter, 
and  as  suitable  chiefly  for  decorating  the  walls 
of  a  drawing-room.  The  one  class  has  ignored 
the  claims  of  painting ;  the  other  committed 
itself  unreservedly  to  that  kind  of  picture,  which 
is  least  of  all  the  product  of  intellect,  or  likely 
to  make  any  demand  upon  the  intelligence.  They 
have  found  it  difficult  to  take  a  painter  and  his 
work  seriously,  or  would  be,  perhaps,  surprised 
to  find  that  such  an  attitude  toward  art  could 
ever  be  expected  of  them.  They  would  find 
incomprehensible  the  suggestion  that  a  man  may 
be  found  who  puts  into  a  picture  as  much  mind 
and  force  of  mind  as  another  man  puts  into  the 
upbuilding  of  a  great  business ;  that  the  qualities 
of  mind  expended  in  each  case  may  be  similar  in 
degree,  and  not  altogether  different  in  kind ;  power 
to  forecast  the  issue,  and  to  labour  strenuously 
for  it,  with  a  capacity  for  organization,  for  select- 
ing, rejecting,  and  coordinating ;  a  gift  of  distin- 
guishing between  essentials  and  non-essentials, 
and    of   converting    sources    of  weakness    into 


120  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

strength,  so  that  the  issue  becomes  in  each  case 
a  monument  to  the  intellect  of  its  creator.  And 
when  one  finds,  as  with  Martin,  that  these  big 
qualities  of  mind  have  been  directed  to  the 
expression  of  what  is  grand  in  nature,  least  tran- 
sitory, most  fundamental,  one  begins  to  have  that 
respect  for  his  art  which  must  precede  all  true 
appreciation,  and  to  discover  that  it  has  a  close 
relation  to  what  is  noble  and  most  endearing  in 
life  —  a  deep,  abiding  reality.  During  his  lifetime 
comparatively  few  appreciated  the  significance  of  his 
work,  but  it  is  of  the  kind  that  time  is  justifying. 
A  very  characteristic  example  is  the  "  West- 
chester Hills,"  because  it  is  at  once  so  powerful 
and  so  free  from  any  of  the  small  and  perfectly 
legitimate  devices  to  attract  attention  ;  a  picture 
that  in  its  sobriety  of  mellow  browns  and  whites 
(for  such,  very  broadly  speaking,  is  its  colour 
scheme)  makes  no  bid  for  popularity ;  in  a  gal- 
lery might  escape  the  notice  of  a  careless  visitor, 
and  grows  upon  one's  comprehension  only  gradu- 
ally. In  the  gathering  gloom  of  twilight  we  are 
confronted  with  a  country  road  crossed  by  a  thread 
of  water  and  bounded  on  the  right  by  a  rough 
stone  wall.  The  road  winds  away  from  us,  skirt- 
ing the  ridge  of  hill,  which  slumbers  like  some 
vast  recumbent  beast  against  the  expanse  of  fading 
sky.     The  dim  foreground  and  shadowed  mass 


t/3 

Oi       . 

W     Z 

o  a 

w 
D  5 


HOMER   D.   MARTIN  121 

are  grandly  modelled ;  strength,  solidity,  and  bulk, 
contrasted  with  the  tremulous  throbbing  of  the 
light.  This  contrast  of  rude,  tawny  ground  with 
the  vibration  of  a  white  sky  recalls  a  favourite 
theme  of  the  French  painter  Pointelin ;  but  one 
feels  that  a  comparison  of  his  pictures  with  the 
"  Westchester  Hills  "  is  all  in  favour  of  the  latter. 
Both  painters  have  felt  the  solemn  loneliness  of 
nature  folding  her  strength  in  sleep,  the  mystery 
of  darkening  and  of  the  lingering  spirituality 
above;  but  Martin  is  the  grander  draughtsman 
of  the  two,  suggesting  with  far  more  convincing- 
ness the  solid  structure  of  the  earth.  So  we  are 
made  to  realize  that  the  phenomenon  is  not 
merely  one  that  he  has  noted  or  that  we  might 
note,  but  one  that  through  countless  ages  has 
manifested  itself  as  part  of  the  order  of  the 
universe. 

Its  significance  is  elemental.  We  may  attrib- 
ute this  to  the  better  drawing,  or,  with  far  more 
justice,  to  the  superiority  of  intellect,  that  could 
embrace  this  larger  conception  and  find  the  means 
to  express  it.  And  in  studying  the  means  let  us 
not  overlook  the  essential  grandeur  of  the  colour ; 
not  of  the  brave  or  passionate  kind,  but  sober 
with  a  concentration  of  subtle  meaning,  that  dis- 
covers infinite  expression  in  the  minutest  varia- 
tions of  the  homely  browns  and  yellows,  which 


122  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

in  the  shadow  yield  nothing  but  their  strength 
and  quietude.  And,  then,  what  a  wonder  of  sug- 
gestion in  the  sky !  It  is  not  only  lighted,  but 
quivering  with  light ;  an  elastic  fluid  that  extends 
as  far  as  one's  imagination  can  travel,  in  height, 
and  breadth,  and  depth.  These  limitless  skies 
are  a  characteristic  of  Martin's  pictures.  He 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  attracted  so  much  by 
cloud  forms  or  to  have  been  given,  as  it  were,  to 
building  castles  in  the  air;  but  his  imagination 
loves  to  free  itself  in  the  far  stretches  of  ether, 
the  circumambient  medium  through  which  the 
waves  of  light  travel.  His  skies  are  brushed  in 
with  firm  assurance ;  it  is  a  pleasure  to  peer  into 
the  canvas  and  study  the  sweep  and  exultation  of 
the  strokes,  and  then  to  step  back  until  distance 
blends  them  into  a  unity  of  ranging  grandeur. 
And  just  as  Corot  said  of  himself,  that  he  was 
"  like  a  lark  pulsing  forth  its  songs  amid  the  gray 
clouds,"  and  his  skies  have  the  vibrative  quality 
of  violin  music,  so  there  is  music  in  these  skies 
of  Martin's,  only  it  is  that  of  the  organ  and  the 
diapason  stop.  True,  the  note  is  not  always  so 
full  and  sonorous  ;  as,  for  example,  in  the  "  View 
on  the  Seine "  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum, 
where  the  splendid  blue  and  white  have  a  more 
silvery  resonance,  which,  however,  is  less  sugges- 
tive of  songfulness  than  of  the  sweep  of  music 


HOMER   D.   MARTIN  123 

travelling  on  and  on.  Indeed,  in  all  his  skies, 
there  is  less  of  local  significance  than  of  the  sug- 
gestion that  the  ether  is  a  tidal  ocean  connecting 
the  fragment  of  circumstance  with  infinity. 

This  landscape  also  shows  that  his  imagination 
was  not  wedded  to  the  solemn.  It  is  brisk  with 
the  joie  de  vivre,  and  yet  not  in  a  merely  sprightly 
way.  In  the  line  of  poplars  on  the  right  of  the 
picture,  each  spiring  up  into  the  sky,  there  is  the 
sense  of  springing  aspiration.  Again,  in  that  beau- 
tiful "  Adirondack  Scenery,"  with  its  waves  of 
brilliant  foliage  rolling  between  the  brow,  on 
which  we  feel  ourselves  standing,  and  the  distant 
cliffs  of  mountains,  what  exuberance  of  spiritual 
joy  !  Spiritual,  indeed,  for  the  picture  was  painted 
far  away  in  the  West,  indoors,  and  under  the  afflic- 
tion of  failing  health.  But  who  would  guess  it 
from  the  picture?  Martin  had  so  possessed  him- 
self of  the  sweetness  and  majesty  of  the  Adiron- 
dacks,  that  he  could  give  out  from  himself,  drawing 
upon  the  treasures  of  his  memory.  It  was  his 
swan  song,  and  how  characteristic  of  the  essential 
nobility  of  the  man,  that  it  breathes  such  ample 
serenity,  such  a  boundless  sense  of  beauty,  pure, 
spacious,  and  enduring !  He  never  dwelt  upon 
his  troubles,  as  smaller  men  do ;  and  this  last  pic- 
ture is  a  grand  assertion  of  the  supremacy  of 
mind  over  matter,  —  a  poet's  triumphant  proof 


124  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

that  his  dream  of  beauty  was  strong  within  him 
to  the  last. 

Martin's  work,  like  that  of  other  great  men, 
was  uneven  in  quality.  But  if  it  lacks  at  times 
perfect  intelligibility  of  construction  or  of  form, 
it  was  not  from  want  of  knowledge  or  ability  to 
draw,  as  is  abundantly  proved  by  the  superlative 
excellence  of  these  very  qualities  in  his  finest 
pictures.  He  had  made  countless  studies,  drawn 
with  the  greatest  care,  revealing  a  thorough  feel- 
ing for  and  comprehension  of  form.  At  times, 
he  may  have  found  a  difficulty  in  translating  his 
knowledge  into  paint.  His  use  of  the  brush, 
used  as  he  needed  to  use  it  to  express  what  he 
had  in  mind,  had  been  necessarily  self-acquired, 
and  often  it  was  rather  the  subtlety  of  the  efFect 
he  desired  to  express  than  any  fractiousness  of 
the  brush,  which  caused  him  to  fumble,  though, 
in  the  majority  of  his  work,  never  sufficiently  to 
distress  us  or  to  divert  attention  from  the  message 
that  his  picture  conveys.  For  always,  in  his  best 
pictures,  there  is  this  distinction  of  a  message ; 
not  a  mere  friendly  interchange  of  views  between 
the  painter  and  his  friend,  or  simple,  easy  plati- 
tude regarding  nature's  beauty,  but  a  deep,  strong, 
personal  assertion  of  some  specific  truth  of  beauty, 
fundamentally  and  enduringly  true.  It  is  the 
sort  of  message  that  appeals  to  the  depth  and 


HOMER   D.   MARTIN  125 

earnestness  in  ourselves ;  and  with  a  comprehen- 
siveness that  permits  each  of  us  to  draw  from  it 
what  particularly  satisfies  himself,  —  qualities  that 
are  the  unfailing  distinction  of  the  great  works  of 
imagination. 

Some  of  his  pictures,  in  which  we  shall  find 
these  qualities  conspicuous,  are  "  Normandy 
Church  "  and  "  Normandy  Farm,"  painted  during 
the  years  that  he  lived  at  Villerville  and  Hon- 
fleur,  "  The  Sun  Worshippers,"  "  Autumn  on 
the  Susquehanna,"  "  Sand  Dunes,  Lake  Ontario," 
and  "  Headwaters  of  the  Hudson."  Individual 
preferences  count  for  very  little ;  but  I  cannot 
resist  the  pleasure  of  recording  a  particular  fond- 
ness for  the  "  Normandy  Church "  and  "  Sand 
Dunes."  In  the  former  it  will  be  remembered 
how  the  roof  and  tower  of  the  church,  embrowned 
with  centuries  softened  by  moss  and  lichen,  stand 
like  an  embodiment  of  stability  against  the  quiet 
movement  of  fleecy  clouds  that  cross  the  blue 
sky,  like  a  token  of  faith  and  protection  to  the 
little  cottage  on  the  left.  It  is  an  idyl  of  the 
permanence  of  hope  and  consolation  in  a  simple 
faith.  Then  what  a  full-lunged  inspiration  of 
rest  and  vastness  does  one  draw  from  the  "  Sand 
Dunes  "  !  It  is  not  the  vastness  of  distance,  for 
the  evening  sky  is  wrapping  with  greenish  gray 
the  sand  hillocks,  which  are  separated  from  us 


126  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

only  by  a  belt  of  warm  green-brown  grass  and  a 
strip  of  golden-brown  scrub.  But  it  is  the  char- 
acter of  the  scene  that  is  vast  in  suggestion.  We 
do  not  feel  the  sky  to  be  a  quilt  of  softness,  but 
an  abyss  of  tenderness,  assuaging  the  desolation 
of  the  spot,  —  a  desolation  that  has  the  feeling  of 
primeval  loneliness. 

For,  at  the  risk  of  repetition,  I  would  dwell 
once  more  upon  the  elemental  quality  that  char- 
acterizes all  the  best  work  of  Homer  Martin. 
Not  only  is  his  theme  elevated  and  serious, 
clothed  moreover  in  pictorial  language  of  corre- 
sponding significance,  but  it  shuns  the  trivial 
and  transitory  and  attaches  itself  to  what  is  basic 
in  nature's  beauty  and  perennially  true.  In  his 
masterpieces  there  is  the  evidence  of  a  great  mind, 
for  the  time  being  unreservedly  consecrated  to 
great  ends,  and  expressing  itself  in  an  ima6..;  of 
grandeur  and  enduring  suggestiveness.  To  rec- 
ognize these  qualities  is  to  rank  him  highest  of 
all  the  poet-painters  of  American  landscape. 


IX 

GEORGE    DE    FOREST    BRUSH 


IX 

GEORGE   DE    FOREST    BRUSH 

TO  many  a  young  student,  regretfully  turn- 
ing his  back  on  the  few  bright  years  of 
study  in  Paris,  has  come  the  question,  "  What 
must  I  do  to  be  saved?"  Hoping  all  things, 
believing  all  things  of  his  single  determination  to 
succeed,  he  feels  within  him  a  capacity ;  but  how 
shall  he  apply  it?  I  fancy  there  are  two  classes 
of  such  aspirants  :  those  who  look  around  them 
for  suggestion,  and  those  who  look  within.  Among 
the  latter  seems  to  have  belonged  George  de 
Forest  Brush. 

Knowing  him  in  the  light  of  his  later  work,  we 
may  feel  it  one  of  the  anomalies  of  art  that  his 
master  in  Paris  should  have  been  Gerome.  Yet 
looking  back  over  our  own  lives,  we  realize  that 
it  was  the  element  of  character,  the  presence  or 
lack  of  it  in  those  with  whom  we  came  in  close 
contact,  that  determined  their  influence  upon  us. 
And  this  quality  of  character  was  strong  in  Ge- 
rome, —  of  all  the  more  value  to  Brush  because  it 
was  of  a  kind  in  many  respects  so  dissimilar  to 

129 


1 3o  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

his  own.  He  is  something  of  a  rebel, —  I  use 
the  word  in  its  most  respectable  sense  —  intel- 
lectually independent,  prone  to  dissatisfaction 
with  things  as  they  are,  unconventional,  perhaps 
a  little  impractical  and  visionary,  as  rebels  are  apt 
to  be,  —  qualities,  all  of  them,  that  are  facets 
of  character.  Gerome,  however,  a  conservative, 
addicted  to  rote  and  rule,  with  his  scholarly  devo- 
tion to  semi-classicalism  or,  as  some  more  severely 
style  it,  pseudo-classicalism ;  a  cold  precisionist, 
who  would  render  the  death  of  a  Caesar  as  accu- 
rately and  dispassionately  as  a  surgeon  dissects  a 
corpus  —  such  a  character  would  be  a  wholesome 
make-weight  to  a  young  romantic  mind. 

It  would  emphasize  especially  the  need  of 
knowledge  and  mastery  of  facts,  encouraging  the 
formation  of  a  stable  basis  on  which  romance,  if  it 
were  minded  to  push  its  head  into  the  clouds, 
might  at  least  have  sure  foundation  for  its  feet. 
Certainly,  one  accomplishment  that  Brush  brought 
back  from  Paris  was  a  feeling  for  form,  and  an- 
other was  a  faculty  of  seizing  upon  the  reality 
of  things  and  of  keeping  close  to  facts.  No 
doubt  it  is  as  a  painter  of  ideas  that  he  is  signifi- 
cant ;  but  do  not  let  us  overlook  the  point  that  all 
his  work,  especially  the  earlier  examples,  shows 
an  appreciation  of  the  actual.  How  much  of  this 
he  owes  to  the  influence  of  Gerome  it  would  be 


GEORGE   DE   FOREST   BRUSH        131 

hard  to  estimate ;  but  even  if  this  realization  of 
the  mental  and  artistic  value  of  the  actual  is  an 
element  in  his  own  character,  the  contact  with 
this  master  must  have  done  much  to  give  it  fibre. 
For  the  sense  of  actuality  is  communicable,  while 
ideas  are  not  only  personal  to  their  author,  but 
inalienable.  And  how  distressingly  elusive,  tame, 
and  profitless  in  pictures  are  ideas  unbased  on 
actuality  —  the  landscape,  for  example,  that  makes 
for  sentiment  without  support  of  drawing  and 
construction.  In  pictures  of  the  human  figure  an 
inspired  control  of  colour  may  fill  us  with  enthu- 
siasm, but  cannot  wholly  stifle  our  regret  if  the 
drawing  is  inadequate ;  for  the  beauty  of  nature  is 
the  beauty  of  its  forms  and  of  the  coloured  rai- 
ment that  clothes  the  forms  without  disguising 
them,  while  in  the  world  of  spiritual  ideas  the 
beauty  depends  upon  their  association  with  or 
analogy  to  the  world  of  matter. 

So  let  us  recognize  the  value  of  the  master's 
influence  upon  Brush.  There  was  much  that 
he  had  to  unlearn  as  he  pursued  his  own  evolu- 
tion, notably  the  sleek,  hard,  and  dispassionate 
method  of  Gerome's  painting.  But  his  brush 
work  every  painter  of  distinguished  character 
must  acquire  gradually  for  himself,  just  as  a 
writer,  if  he  is  an  honest  craftsman,  will  discover 
his  own  fashion  of  words,  adjusting  his  method 


132 


AMERICAN   MASTERS 


of  expression  to  what  he  is  trying  to  express ; 
the  main  thing,  both  for  painter  and  writer,  being 
to  have  something  to  say :  something  which  is 
a  part  of  the  man's  self  and  convictions.  The 
method  will  grow  to  it. 

Leaving  Gerome's  studio,  Brush,  like  other 
students,  stood  at  the  dividing  ways.  He  might 
have  cast  his  eye  around  him,  noted  what  seemed 
to  be  the  tendencies  of  the  day  in  art,  the  "  latest 
style,"  as  the  fashion-makers  call  it,  and  set  to 
work  to  reproduce  in  New  York  the  impressions 
aroused  in  Paris.  Then,  in  time,  he  would  have 
been  among  those  who  excuse  their  own  lack  of 
initiative  with  the  lament  that  in  our  city  there  is 
no  "art  atmosphere." 

In  the  sense  they  seem  to  mean  it,  the  absence 
is  not  an  unmitigated  evil,  for  what  is  this 
"art  atmosphere,"  when  you  search  it  closely? 
A  little,  perhaps,  like  Scotland,  as  characterized 
by  a  Scotchman,  "  The  most  beautiful  country 
in  the  world  to  live  out  of."  So  it  is  well  to 
know  there  are  places  where  the  art  atmosphere 
abounds,  that  one  may  visit  for  a  time  with 
pleasure  and  profit;  yet  it  is  remarkable  how  the 
great  painters,  the  men  of  force  and  character, 
whose  minds  push  them  on  continually,  live 
either  outside  of  it  or  within  it  behind  closed 
doors.     The  smallness    inseparable   from  an  art 


GEORGE   DE   FOREST   BRUSH        133 

atmosphere,  the  mutual  admiration  and  amiable 
reciprocity  of  patting  of  backs,  or  worse,  the 
"  Bully,  my  boy  !  "  to  his  face,  and  the  "  How  he's 
missed  it !  "  behind  his  back ;  the  petty  rivalries 
of  little  cliques  that  clutter  of  themselves  across  a 
cafe  table,  setting  up  little  standards  and  gaining 
brief  conspicuousness  by  repeating  one  another's 
efforts  —  this  is  not  the  sort  of  atmosphere  that 
strong  painters  need  to  breathe.  They  would  be 
stifled  in  it.  They  need,  like  Delacroix  or  Puvis 
de  Chavannes,  the  ample  privacy  of  their  own 
inner  life,  or,  like  the  Barbizon  men,  the  large 
seclusion  of  nature.  For  such  an  atmosphere  a 
painter  of  Brush's  calibre  would  have  no  use. 

He  returned  to  this  country ;  not  to  city  life, 
but  to  the  wide  freedom  of  the  western  terri- 
tories, and  found  inspiration  for  his  imagination 
among  the  Indians.  I  know  nothing  of  what  im- 
pelled him ;  whether  it  were  a  survival  of  a  boy's 
enthusiasm  for  the  story  of  his  country,  or  a  sug- 
gestion received  from  the  archaeological  associa- 
tions of  Gerome's  studio,  or  some  happy  chance 
of  idea,  seized  upon  and  followed  out;  but  the 
significant  point  is  that,  though  fresh  from  Paris, 
or,  shall  we  say  ?  because  of  it,  he  found  motives 
that  attracted  him  in  America.  The  older  men 
had  found  them  too,  but  many  of  the  younger 
generation,    returning   from    Europe,   were   pro- 


134  AMERICAN    MASTERS 

claiming,  and  many  do  so  still,  that  the  condi- 
tions of  America  are  unfavourable  to  pictorial 
motives.  May  it  not  be  that  the  barrenness  is 
in  themselves  ?  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  land- 
scape painters,  but  the  figure  men.  One  of  their 
laments  is  the  lack  of  picturesque  costumes. 
This  same  word  "  picturesqueness  "  has  been  the 
bane  of  painting  for  two  hundred  years,  implying 
the  necessity  of  certain  formulated  qualities  in  a 
landscape  or  figure,  rendering  it  suitable  for  the 
purposes  of  a  picture.  Owing  to  this  obsession, 
Corot  was  fifty  years  old  and  had  paid  three  visits 
to  Italy  before  he,  poet  though  he  was,  could  feel 
the  suggestion  of  loveliness  in  the  scenery  of  his 
native  country.  So  one  must  not  be  too  hard  on 
others  who  are  deaf  to  the  calling  of  their  en- 
vironment. But  let  us  give  no  quarter  to  pic- 
turesqueness. It  is  a  discredited,  discreditable 
evasion  of  "u*  facts.  The  true  painter  sees  pic- 
tures all  around  him  or  evokes  them  from  his 
imagination ;  the  world  of  matter  or  of  spirit  con- 
tinually presents  itself  to  him  in  pictorial  fashion ; 
it  is  only  a  journeyman  who  hunts  for  picturesque 
jobs. 

It  may  be  said  that  possibly  it  was  just  this 
picturesque  quality  in  the  Indians  that  attracted 
Brush.  I  cannot  say ;  but  had  he  penetrated  no 
further  than  the  unusualness  of  their  costumes 


GEORGE   DE   FOREST   BRUSH        135 

and  habits,  as  is  the  case  with  others,  so  far  as 
I  know,  who  have  painted  them,  there  were 
nothing  to  be  said.  But  he  has  penetrated  into 
the  life  and  thought  of  the  Indian,  and,  more 
than  that,  has  re-created  in  his  pictures  something 
of  the  primeval  world ;  its  vast  isolation,  silence, 
mystery.  He  has  found  in  these  modern  red- 
men  a  clue  to  their  past  and  has  created  a  series 
of  picture-poems  which  have  the  lyric  melody  of 
Longfellow's  "  Hiawatha,"  an  equal  individuality 
and  appeal  to  the  imagination  and  a  greater 
virility.  Let  me  instance  "  Silence  Broken  "  — 
a  little  glimpse  of  river,  banked  with  dense  foli- 
age, out  of  which  a  goose  has  burst  above  an 
Indian  in  his  canoe.  It  is  a  small  picture,  repre- 
senting a  contracted  spot,  but  it  needs  very  little 
imagination  to  make  one  feel  that  this  fragment 
of  seclusion  is  part  of  an  immensity  of  solitariness. 
The  man,  kneeling  as  he  plies  the  paddle,  looks 
up  in  no  wise  startled,  but  with  a  grand  compos- 
ure that  seems  a  part  of  the  elemental  suggestion 
of  the  scene.  It  is  a  work  of  powerful  imagina- 
tion, projecting  itself  upon  the  solemn  spacious- 
ness and  mystery  of  the  past. 

Recall,  too,  another  small  canvas  of  big  sig- 
nificance, "  Mourning  her  Brave."  Standing  by 
her  dead  in  the  snow,  high  up  on  a  mountain 
ledge,  the  woman  utters  her  dirge  to  a  leaden 


136  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

sky.  What  emptiness  and  desolation  of  world 
without  and  spirit  within !  A  breath  of  the  cease- 
less mystery  of  sorrow  throbbing  out  of  the  void 
of  time  !  Then  a  tenderer  feeling  pervades  "  The 
Sculptor  and  the  King."  Stroke  by  stroke  the 
sculptor  has  compelled  the  marble  to  respond  to 
his  thought,  or  wooed  it,  for  he  has  a  gentle, 
dreamy  face ;  a  youth  only  dimly  conscious  of  his 
desires,  and  he  waits  for  the  king's  verdict,  tremu- 
lously eager,  and  withal  so  glad  in  his  heart  at 
what  his  hands  have  found  the  skill  to  do ;  a 
poetic  embodiment  not  only  of  the  primitive 
man's  yearning  after  expression,  but  of  the  spring- 
time of  every  artist's  soul.  Then  note  the  king, 
standing  with  folded  arms,  wrapping  his  doubt  of 
the  desirability  of  such  things  and,  yet,  his  wonder 
and  admiration  of  them  in  the  convenient  impene- 
trability of  silence.  There  is  a  touch  of  humour 
in  this  figure,  as  of  the  critic  non-plussed  and 
unwilling  to  commit  himself,  but  much  more  of 
serious  reference  to  the  early  dawnings  of  a  com- 
prehension of  the  beautiful,  as  "a  thing  to  be 
desired  to  make  one  wise." 

Those  Indian  subjects  are  of  a  high  order  of 
imaginative  work.  They  have  a  great  power  of 
suggestion,  stirring  directly  and  forcibly  one's  own 
imagination ;  and  they  are  informed  with  an  eleva- 
tion of  thought,  a  deeply  penetrating  earnestness 


Frooa  tiif  Muim-uiii  of  Fine  Arts,  Bouun,  Copyright,  imj7,  by  Foster  Brotbei*, 

mother  and  child. 
By  Georgr  i>k  Forest  Brush. 


GEORGE   DE   FOREST  BRUSH        137 

and  a  largeness  of  conception  that  has  been  able 
to  grasp  the  big  significances  and  to  feel  them  in 
their  relation  to  perennial  truth.  For  they  not 
only  suggest  the  life  and  environment  of  the  early 
redman,  picturing  both  with  a  fulness  of  compre- 
hension that  brings  them  vividly  to  our  con- 
sciousness, but  they  involve  allusions  to  our  own 
experience.  There  are  periods  of  sorrow  when 
the  world  seems  very  empty  and  desolate  to-day ; 
there  still  are  yearnings  after  higher  things,  the 
flutterings  of  doubt  and  hope  that  precede  the 
beginning  of  growth  of  something  better;  and 
still  a  grandeur  in  the  solitude  of  nature  and 
maybe  in  that  of  a  man's  own  communings  with 
himself.  We  may  or  may  not  have  experienced 
those  things,  but,  at  least,  we  have  an  intuition 
of  their  possibility ;  and  if  a  picture  can  recall 
the  past  and  show  it  as  part  of  the  eternal  rela- 
tion of  spirit  and  matter,  we  are  justified  in 
honouring  its  author.  So  these  pictures  of 
Brush's  seem  to  me  great,  notwithstanding  a  cer- 
tain smallness  —  I  will  not  call  it  pettiness  —  in 
their  execution.  As  I  recall  the  "  Mourning  her 
Brave,"  it  has  considerable  breadth  of  method, 
and,  no  doubt,  others  of  the  Indian  series  show 
increase  of  manual  accomplishment.  But  the 
painting  in  "  Silence  Broken,"  still  influenced  by 
Gerome's,  is  hard  and  shiny ;    and  the  drawing 


138  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

in  "  The  Sculptor  and  the  King "  has  a  quality 
of  timorous  and  laboured  exactness.  It  is  not  in 
consequence  of  style,  but  despite  it,  that  they  are 
impressive. 

With  the  artist's  personal  development  has  come 
maturity  of  craftsmanship.  His  latest  series  of 
"  Mother  and  Child  "  are  marked  by  fluency  of 
composition  both  in  the  lines  and  masses  and  in 
the  colour  schemes.  But  with  the  ripening  of 
his  powers  has  scarcely  followed  increase  of  indi- 
viduality. He  has  freed  himself  from  the  hard, 
evenly  lighted,  rather  tight  character  of  Gerome's 
manner  only  to  yield  himself  to  the  fascination  of 
the  old  Italian  style.  It  is  a  little  surprising  that 
one  whose  imagination  is  so  individual  should 
have  failed  to  discover  a  really  personal  language 
of  expression.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  lack  of 
facility  was  beyond  his  power  to  remedy,  and  that, 
feeling  the  need  of  broadening  his  method,  and 
conscious  that  breadth  with  him  would  mean 
chiefly  a  larger  kind  of  precision,  he  had  found 
in  the  example  of  some  of  the  Italian  masters 
just  that  union  of  qualities.  Then,  too,  if  he 
were  searching  for  precedents  it  is  to  the  dignity 
and  quietude  of  the  Florentines  that  such  a  tem- 
perament as  his  would  turn.  And  in  these  later 
pictures  one  is  conscious  of  these  qualities.  They 
have  an  air  of  noble  sweetness,  serenity,  and  high 


GEORGE   DE   FOREST   BRUSH        139 

and  earnest  purpose,  creating,  wherever  they  ap- 
pear, an  atmosphere  of  their  own,  pure  and  elevat- 
ing as  that  of  the  upper  air.  Yet,  as  creative 
work,  I  think  many  will  rank  them  lower  than 
the  promise  of  his  early  days.  Their  motive  is 
a  borrowed  one  —  borrowed  with  their  technique. 
True,  it  is  one  of  beautiful  human  significance, 
but  its  representation,  especially  to  one  who  is  a 
husband  and  a  father,  makes  a  comparatively  small 
demand  upon  the  imaginative  faculties.  So  that, 
if  we  feel  the  evidence  of  these  faculties  in  paint- 
ing to  be  the  rare  and  superlative  thing,  the 
artist's  persistence  upon  a  somewhat  lower  plane 
of  endeavour  must  seem  regretful.  It  is  rather 
a  merging  of  the  artistic  prepossession  in  the 
human. 

And  I  wonder  whether  this  may  not  be  the 
explanation.  In  early  manhood,  while  the  im- 
pulse was  from  within,  he  sought  the  objective 
for  it  in  the  world  outside,  characteristically  choos- 
ing those  scenes  which  would  least  interfere  with 
the  seclusion  of  his  own  mind.  In  later  years  he 
has  found  the  seclusion  in  his  own  home,  yielding 
to  the  natural  tendency,  as  the  years  grow  upon 
one,  to  feel  the  world  to  be  less  and  less,  and 
those  closest  to  one  more  and  more.  And,  it 
must  be  remembered,  the  conditions  of  the  world 
were  never  quite  to  his  liking,  while  his  home  is 


i4o  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

what  he  has  made  it  and  would  have  it.  Yet 
this,  after  all,  represents  the  evolution  of  a  man 
rather  than  of  the  artist  —  a  yielding  to  circum- 
stances, inclinations,  conveniences,  rather  than  a 
following  of  one's  star. 

I  write  these  words  with  hesitation,  as  it  may 
be  my  own  fault  that  I  do  not  detect  in  these 
later  works  as  much  evidence  of  elevated  imagi- 
nation as  in  the  Indian  studies.  If  so,  I  would 
plead  in  extenuation  my  enthusiasm  for  those 
earlier  pictures. 


X 

ALEXANDER   H.  WYANT 


ALEXANDER   H.   WYANT 

THERE  is  a  species  of  ivy  in  England — I 
do  not  know  if  it  exists  in  this  country  — 
that  grows  over  old  stone  walls  and  towers.  It 
is  treelike  in  character  and  size.  Probably  it  was 
never  planted  deliberately  against  the  masonry, 
but  reached  its  habitat  by  one  of  those  romances 
of  nature's  accidents.  Finding  the  support  that 
its  young  life  needed,  it  clung  and  mounted ; 
gradually,  however,  gaining  independent  strength 
until  in  the  maturity  of  its  growth  it  has  its 
own  boughs,  so  hardy  that  a  man  may  climb  by 
them,  and  puts  forth  bunchy  masses  of  leaves  and 
berries  that  disguise  the  original  support  in  a 
luxuriance  of  independent  growth. 

Such  is  often  the  story  of  an  artist's  develop- 
ment, and  is  that  of  Wyant's.  In  the  small 
town  of  Defiance,  in  Ohio,  where  he  lived,  there 
was  little  to  suggest  to  the  boy  what  pictures 
meant,  and  yet  he  had  the  picture-making  faculty 
in  himself:  the  observant  eye  and  desire  to  trans- 
late into  line  the  forms  of  things.     He  drew  in- 

143 


144  AMERICAN  MASTERS 

cessantly :  the  forms  of  stones,  of  banks,  and  tree 
roots,  their  stems  and  branches,  and  made  studies 
of  the  leaves,  separately  and  minutely,  as  well  as 
in  masses.  I  like  to  think  of  him  as  a  child  lying 
full  length  before  the  kitchen  fire  with  a  bit  of 
burnt  wood  taken  from  it,  drawing  on  the  floor ; 
and  fancy  that  in  that  soft,  suggestive  medium  of 
charcoal,  and  on  the  rough  surface  of  his  impro- 
vised panel,  he  may  have  got  his  first  dim  con- 
sciousness of  the  meaning  of  synthesis  in  landscape; 
the  securing  of  character  and  tone,  and  the  fascina- 
tion of  working  in  masses  rather  than  in  outline. 
When  he  was  old  enough  to  be  set  to  a  trade, 
he  was  apprenticed  to  a  harness  maker,  working 
in  his  leisure  hours  at  sign  painting.  But  all 
roads  lead  to  Rome,  and  a  youth  might  derive 
much  skill  in  form,  as  well  as  breadth  of  manner, 
in  this  humble  department  of  the  fine  arts. 
Somewhere  about  the  fifties  he  found  himself 
in  Cincinnati,  even  then  an  oasis  in  the  desert 
of  western  indifference  to,  or  ignorance  of,  art. 
It  was  here,  in  a  private  collection,  that  he  first 
discovered  what  painted  pictures  were  like,  and, 
with  a  rare  instinct  for  one  so  young,  it  was 
Inness's  work  that  captured  his  imagination. 
A  youth,  passionate  and  eager  as  Wyant  was, 
must  have  his  god  or  goddess ;  a  being  infinitely 
above   him,  yet,  perhaps,  of  infinite   condescen- 


ALEXANDER   H.  WYANT  145 

sion,  who  will  listen  to  his  devotion.  Some  of  us 
may  have  offered  our  heart  and  future  to  ladies 
nearly  old  enough  to  be  our  mothers ;  Wyant's 
divinity  was  of  the  other  sex,  an  Apollo  at  whose 
oracle  he  would  inquire.  He  found  the  means  to 
come  to  New  York  and  lay  his  sketches  before 
the  master,  and  never  forgot  the  kindly  criticism 
which  bid  him  be  of  good  courage  and  persevere. 
He  was  now  about  twenty  years  old,  and  nearly 
ten  more  years  were  to  elapse  before  his  own  inde- 
pendent growth  was  to  establish  itself.  Mean- 
while its  direction  had  been  assured  by  the 
influence  of  Inness  ;  its  manner  of  growth  was  to 
be  partly  affected  by  the  Norwegian  painter,  Hans 
Gude,  who  had  graduated  from  Diisseldorf  and 
was  at  this  time  working  in  Carlsruhe.  He  had 
been  the  pupil  of  Achenbach,  who,  as  Muther 
says,  had  "  taught  him  to  approach  the  phenomena 
of  nature  boldly  and  realistically,  and  not  to  be 
afraid  of  a  rich  and  soft  scale  of  colour."  He  had 
felt  the  influence,  also,  of  Schirmer,  whose  fond- 
ness for  the  so-called  Italian  landscape  had  guided 
him  to  the  "  acquisition  of  a  certain  large  harmony 
and  sense  for  style  in  the  structure  of  his  pictures." 
Such  was  Gude,  to  whom  Wyant  went  for  instruc- 
tion. He  spoke  in  after  years  of  the  kindness 
with  which  he  had  been  received  as  almost  one 
of  the  household  by  the  painter  and  his  good  frau, 


146  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

and  one  may  imagine  that  the  student  took  much 
profit  from  the  master's  emphasizing  of  form  and 
construction,  and  also  from  the  reposeful  dignity, 
academic  though  it  was,  of  his  compositions. 
But  when  the  older  man  passed  from  the  teaching 
of  principles  to  that  of  methods,  and  urged  his 
pupil  to  imitate  his  particular  manner  of  presenting 
the  truths,  Wyant's  independence  rebelled.  He 
had  learned  what  could  properly  be  taught,  and 
recognizing  that  for  the  rest  he  must  depend  upon 
himself,  returned  to  New  York. 

Face  to  face  with  the  problem  of  making  a 
living,  and  hoping  to  gain  useful  experience,  he 
joined  a  government  exploring  expedition  to  the 
West.  But  the  party  suffered  terrible  hardships, 
to  which  Wyant's  physique  succumbed.  He  was 
put  upon  the  train  to  return  East,  and  might 
have  stopped  at  his  mother's  home  to  be  nursed 
and  cared  for.  And  much  he  needed  tending,  for 
he  was  helpless,  stricken  with  paralysis ;  but  the 
mind  in  his  poor  body  was  still  active ;  he  argued 
that  to  be  taken  off  at  a  far  western  station  was 
to  become  stranded,  to  lose  all  touch  with  the 
painter's  life,  on  which  his  determination  was  still 
fixed.  So  he  let  himself  be  carried  past  his  home 
and  reached  New  York.  No  words  can  add  to 
the  pathetic  heroism  of  this  decision.  But  in  our 
admiration  of  the  delicate  poetry  which  belongs 


r^     * 


ALEXANDER   rf.  WYANT  147 

to  the  work  of  Wyant  that  we  know  best,  let  us 
not  lose  sight  of  the  force  of  will-power  that  was 
involved  in  the  making  of  it.  "  Yes,  he  had  been 
in  hell ! "  exclaims  Carlyle  of  Dante ;  and  while 
suffering  may  not  be  the  only  road  to  highest 
effort,  it  is  one  of  them,  and  the  man  who  passes 
along  it  like  a  man,  even  if  he  cannot  tread  it, 
but  must  be  carried,  as  in  Wyant's  case,  is  very 
apt  to  produce  something  more  than  ordinarily 
appealing  to  the  hearts  of  other  men.  While 
Wyant  recovered  the  use  of  his  body,  though 
obliged  ever  after  to  paint  with  his  left  hand,  he 
was  never  really  free  from  some  bodily  discom- 
fort ;  and  I  wonder  whether  this  may  not  have 
had  some  influence  upon  his  notable  preference 
for  depicting  nature  at  the  hush  and  restfulness 
of  twilight.  To  one  whose  days  were,  more  or 
less,  days  of  weariness,  constantly  sensible  of  the 
afflictions  of  the  body,  with  what  a  benediction 
the  evening  would  come,  full  of  spiritual  refresh- 
ment !  Out  of  the  cool  cisterns  of  the  night  his 
spirit  would  drink  repose. 

For  many  years  he  made  his  summer  home  in 
the  Adirondacks  ;  then,  fearing  that  he  was  getting 
too  much  into  a  groove  in  his  way  of  seeing  nature, 
he  transferred  his  study  to  the  Catskills.  The 
move  is  characteristic  of  his  alert  sensitiveness  to 
nature's  impressions.     His  temperament  was  like 


i48  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

an  ^Eolian  harp,  delicately  attuned  to  nature's 
breath,  responsive  to  its  faintest  sigh ;  but  he 
dreaded  lest  the  melody  might  become  too 
uniform,  too  much  a  merely  passive  expression. 
There  was  a  similar  mingling  of  purpose  and  of 
surrender  in  his  relations  with  his  fellows.  To  a 
few  friends,  among  them  always  Inness,  he  gave 
a  welcome,  and  no  little  of  his  time  and  means 
in  constant  acts  of  kindness  to  those  who  needed 
help ;  but  from  social  or  official  functions  he  kept, 
as  far  as  possible,  clear.  He  had  so  much  that 
in  his  heart  he  longed  to  do,  had  begun  his  life's 
work  comparatively  so  late,  and  knew  the  years 
left  to  do  it  in  were  few.  It  was  only  by  unre- 
mitting application  that  he  could  realize  his  ideal. 
This  concentration  of  endeavour  affected  his 
ideal,  limiting  the  range  of  moods  of  nature  that 
he  strove  to  represent.  Such  versatility  as  In- 
ness's  and  that  painter's  alacrity  of  impression  to 
constantly  differing  phases  of  nature  were  im- 
possible to  his  temperament  and  circumstances. 
Drawn  by  both  to  isolate  himself,  he  heard  in  the 
silence  of  his  own  heart  the  still  small  voice  of 
nature,  listened  for  it  always,  and  strove  to  woo  it. 
The  echo  of  it  is  felt,  I  think,  in  all  his  land- 
scapes. We  may  recall  some  of  his  large  wood- 
land pictures,  in  which  sturdy  trees  are  gripping 
the  rocks  with  their  roots.     Strength  and  stability 


ALEXANDER   H.  WYANT  149 

and  the  evidences  of  time  confront  us,  just  as 
they  would  in  the  forest  itself;  but  like  cathedral 
architecture  when  music  is  pulsing  through  it, 
they  are  for  the  moment  secondary  to  the  spiritual 
impression  of  the  voice.  Wyant  heard  it  in  the 
movement  of  the  tree-tops,  and  in  the  stir  of 
weeds  and  ferns  that  nestled  in  the  hollows,  and  it 
whispered  to  him  of  peace,  a  quiescence  that  stirs 
the  soul  to  gentle  activity,  gladsome  by  turns  or 
subdued  in  the  alternate  sun  and  shadow,  that  in- 
exhaustible mystery  of  nature's  peace  that  passeth 
man's  understanding.  We  have  all  felt  it  and 
know  how  far  it  is  from  our  everyday  lives,  and 
we  look  to  word-poets  and  to  poet-painters  to 
create  an  illusion  of  it.  Surely  no  American 
painter  has  done  this  more  irresistibly  than  Wyant. 
Nor  is  there  wanting  to  the  peace  of  his  pictures 
at  times  a  more  solemn  suggestion.  While  so 
many  of  his  twilights  breathe  simplv  the  ineffable 
loveliness  of  quiet,  others  are  astir  with  persuasion 
to  spiritual  reflection,  with  the  gentle  admonition 
to  sadness  that  itself  is  purifying,  or  with  deeper, 
fuller  suggestion  of  the  infinite  mystery  of  na- 
ture's recurring  sleep  that  swallows  up  the  little- 
ness of  man  in  its  immensity.  I  remember,  too, 
a  little  picture  of  darkened  earth  and  rather  turbu- 
lent dark  sky  in  which  a  large  boulder  alone  glis- 
tens in  the  fading  light — a  rock  of  illumination 


i5o  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

and  strength  in  the  surrounding  uncertainty  of 
gathering  night.  Brimming  over  with  the  sugges- 
tion of  an  elevated  melancholy  sustained  by  faith, 
and  painted  with  an  extraordinary  earnestness  of 
simple  and  direct  conviction,  it  seems  like  a  sym- 
bol of  Wyant's  own  art  life. 

But  almost  everything  that  he  painted  is  expres- 
sive of  some  phase,  at  least,  of  himself.  His 
work  is  more  than  ordinarily  personal ;  perhaps, 
for  the  reason  already  mentioned,  that  he  so  delib- 
erately concentrated  his  motives.  And  the  quality 
of  his  poetry  was  lyrical.  I  have  seen  it  called 
idyllic,  but  that  is  to  miss  its  higher  and  deeper 
qualities.  The  idyl,  Tennyson  notwithstanding, 
is  too  much  identified  with  the  little  pastoral  poem, 
that  breathes  the  simple  gladsomeness  of  the  mea- 
dows ;  but  a  more  serious  strain  is  interwoven 
with  the  gentleness  and  lovableness  of  Wyant's 
muse.  He  was  passionately  fond  of  music  and, 
before  his  illness,  could  play  the  violin,  not  learn- 
edly, but  with  true  feeling.  And  the  music  of  his 
painting  is  that  of  the  violin ;  tenderly  vibrating, 
searching  home  to  one's  heart,  by  turns  lightsome, 
melancholy,  caressing,  impetuous,  but  with  a  ten- 
derness in  all.  He  did  not  play  on  many  colours, 
but  reaches  a  subtlety  of  tone,  often  as  bewilder- 
ing as  it  is  soothing.  The  bewilderment  will  be 
aroused  as  much  by  his  shadowed  foregrounds  as 


ALEXANDER    H.  WYANT  151 

by  the  faintly  luminous  sky.  They  defy  analysis 
and  are  triumphs  of  impressionism.  Impression- 
ism of  the  true  kind,  I  mean,  pregnant  with  sug- 
gestion and  divested  of  aught  that  would  clog  its 
directness ;  exhibiting,  not  knowledge,  but  the  fruit 
of  knowledge,  and  especially  its  tact  of  omission. 
To  the  careless  and  commonplace  eye  his  land- 
scapes have  "  nothing  to  them  "  ;  approached  with 
a  little  understanding  they  mean  so  much,  and 
the  measure  of  their  meaning  is  the  technical 
knowledge  involved.  If  there  were  any  doubt  of 
this,  it  could  be  disposed  of  by  an  examination 
of  his  earlier  work,  in  which  he  lets  one  into  the 
secret  of  his  love  of  form  and  construction.  Ad- 
mirably sure  and  full  of  character  is  the  drawing 
of  the  ground  and  its  features,  bit  by  bit  receiving 
its  due  share  of  individuality ;  so  also  with  the 
trees  and  their  anatomy  of  trunk  and  branches, 
and  with  the  structure  of  the  sky.  Everything 
has  been  studied,  so  that  later  out  of  the  abun- 
dance of  his  technical  skill  he  could  be  signifi- 
cantly spontaneous.  Yet  increase  of  facility  did 
not  lessen  the  self-exacting  conscientiousness  of 
his  work.  Some  of  his  most  impressionistic  pic- 
tures were  the  result  of  trying  to  reach  a  fuller 
exactness  of  expression ;  when,  finding  confusion 
growing,  he  would  seize  another  canvas  and  return 
to  the  simplicity  of  his  original  thought  and  let  it 


152  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

form  itself.  Few  painters  are  better  represented 
in  their  extant  works.  The  fumbled  canvas,  or  the 
one  that,  however  sketchily,  did  not  attain  to  his 
intention,  never  left  the  studio,  and  after  his  death, 
Mrs.  Wyant,  with  a  fine  regard  for  his  memory 
and  with  honour  to  herself,  destroyed  them.  So 
the  real  Wyants  —  for  I  am  told  there  are  sham 
ones  on  the  market — are  invariably  worthy. 

So  truly  did  he  retain  the  spirit  of  the  student 
that  it  was  not  until  a  little  before  his  death  that 
he  allowed  himself  to  feel  that  he  had  mastered 
the  grammar  of  his  technique.  Then,  with  the 
consciousness  of  his  end  before  him,  he  would  ex- 
claim, "  Had  I  but  five  years  more  in  which  to 
paint,  even  one  year,  I  think  I  could  do  the  thing 
that  I  long  to."  Brave,  modest  soul !  What  he 
might  then  have  done  we  shall  never  know ;  but 
what  he  did  do  we  know  to  be  very  good.  For 
another  nature  poet  of  our  race,  of  like  simplicity 
and  singleness  of  love  for  nature,  of  as  choice  and 
elevated  a  spirit,  and  as  lyrical  in  expression,  we 
must  go  back  to  Wordsworth,  who  also  in  his 
communings  with  nature  found  her  message  — 

n  Of  truth,  of  grandeur,  beauty,  love,  and  hope, 
And  melancholy  fear  subdued  by  faith, 
Of  blessed  consolations  in  distress, 
Of  moral  strength  and  intellectual  power,   - 
Of  joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread." 


XI 
DWIGHT   W.   TRYCM 


XI 

DWIGHT  W.   TRYON 

IF  we  wished  to  introduce  a  foreigner  to  what  is 
most  distinctively  American  in  our  painting, 
we  should  show  him,  I  think,  the  work  of  some 
of  our  marine  and  landscape  painters.  He  would 
be  least  likely  in  these  to  detect  the  influence  of 
Europe.  The  point  of  view  he  would  recognize, 
no  doubt,  as  the  one  common  to  all  nature 
students  since  the  Dutchmen  of  the  seventeenth 
century ;  but  in  regard  to  the  technique  he  could 
not  attribute  its  character  to  the  influence  of  this 
or  the  other  master  abroad,  for  our  landscape 
painters,  like  most  other  true  students  of  nature, 
have  found,  each  for  himself,  their  own  necessary 
and  inevitable  language  of  expression.  Necessary 
because  it  originated  in  their  own  peculiar  need, 
and  inevitable  because  it  grew  out  of  the  particu- 
lar character  of  the  portion  of  nature  that  they 
studied.  And  in  most  cases  it  is  some  phase  of 
the  American  landscape  that  has  engaged  the 
American  painter,  which  accounts  in  no  slight 
degree  for  the  individuality  of  his  work. 

155 


156  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

For  do  we  pay  enough  heed  to  the  essential 
differences  that  nature  presents  in  different  locali- 
ties ?  At  the  moment  I  am  not  thinking  of  the 
variations  in  construction,  forms,  and  configuration, 
as,  for  example,  between  the  aspects  of  mountains 
and  of  simple  pastoral  regions,  nor  even  of  the 
separateness  of  impress  set  upon  the  landscape  by 
man  in  the  character  of  his  buildings  or  of  his 
farming  occupations,  but  of  that  more  subtle  dif- 
ference produced  by  varying  kinds  of  atmosphere. 
The  great  landscape  painters,  we  may  have 
noticed,  all  belong  to  northern  countries,  who 
have  lived,  comparatively  speaking,  within  the 
same  degrees  of  latitude ;  and  yet  the  landscapes 
of  Holland,  France,  Scotland,  England,  Norway, 
and  America  can  never  be  mistaken  for  one  an- 
other. Apart  from  local  conditions  of  man's 
handiwork,  each  varies  in  the  local  quality  of  its 
atmosphere  —  its  degree  of  clarity  or  humidity,  of 
briskness  or  caressingness. 

In  a  country  vast  as  ours,  there  must  needs  be 
diversity  in  different  parts,  so  there  cannot  be  any 
one  character  of  landscape  distinctively  American  ; 
but,  in  their  faithful  rendering  of  the  local  char- 
acter, all  may  be  distinguishable  from  those  of 
other  countries.  And  this  expression  on  the 
countenance  of  nature  is  not  unlike  that  on  the 
face  of  a  man  or  woman ;  the  painter  may  suggest 


DWIGHT  W.   TRYON  157 

it  perfunctorily,  or  he  may  render  it  with  a  com- 
pleteness of  sympathy  and  understanding,  products 
of  alert  sensibility  and  interested  acquaintance- 
ship. It  is  the  evidence  of  these  qualities  that 
gives  enduring  charm  to  Tryon's  landscapes. 

No  one  who  knows  his  work  will  need  to  be 
told  that  he  is  a  New  Englander.  His  landscapes 
show  an  intimacy  of  knowledge  of  that  locality, 
and  an  affectionate  sympathy  with  its  particular 
phases  of  expression,  that  could  only  result  from 
the  painter  having  grown  up  in  that  part,  the 
boy's  associations  gradually  maturing  into  the 
man's  convictions.  His  home  was  in  Hartford, 
Conn.,  where  he  was  born  in  1849.  He  entered 
upon  life  as  a  stationer's  assistant,  and  pursued  the 
occupation  until  he  had  accumulated  sufficient 
means  to  visit  Paris,  all  the  while  spending  his 
leisure  time  in  studying  from  nature  and  in  dis- 
covering for  himself  how  to  represent  his  ideas  in 
paint.  There  is  evidence  in  this  of  sanity  as  well 
as  earnestness,  of  a  fine  poise  of  character,  quali- 
ties later  to  appear  in  his  landscapes. 

Above  all,  there  is  the  perfectly  natural  process 
of  a  painter's  evolution ;  I  mean,  the  antecedent 
love  of  nature,  the  clear  apprehension  of  the  kind 
of  nature  that  he  aimed  to  paint,  the  love  of  it 
and  the  knowledge  preceding  the  final  acquisition 
of  technique ;  meanwhile,  the  gradual  upbuilding 


158  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

of  personal  character  by  the  discipline  of  postpon- 
ing his  ideals.  So,  when  he  reached  Paris,  it  was 
not  as  a  raw,  enthusiastic  student  whose  subse- 
quent career  spun  suspended  upon  a  mere  cob- 
web of  his  fancy.  He  had  married,  and  took  his 
wife  with  him,  establishing  a  little  home  and  hav- 
ing clear  plans  in  view,  being,  in  fact,  a  man. 
He  painted  under  Harpignies  and  Daubigny,  an 
excellent  combination  of  influences,  mutually 
complementary :  the  one  so  sound  and  methodi- 
cal, if  a  little  prosaic ;  the  other  so  captivating  in 
the  perennial  boyishness  of  his  mind,  so  lovable 
a  student  of  the  simple  loveliness  of  rural  scenes. 
What  a  happy  antidote  was  Daubigny  to  the  ex- 
cessive earnestness  of  a  typical  New  England 
character;  how  persuasively  suggestive  must  his 
landscapes  have  been  to  one  whose  heart  was  im- 
planted in  the  austerer  charms  of  his  New  Eng- 
land home.  The  influence  of  his  two  masters 
served  on  the  one  hand  to  send  the  roots  of  his 
growth  farther  down  and  to  stiffen  the  trunk,  and 
on  the  other  to  encourage  a  more  abundant  leaf- 
age and  the  added  fragrance  of  blossom.  From 
both,  also,  he  must  have  gained  a  store  of  techni- 
cal principles ;  but  of  direct  influence  in  his  man- 
ner of  painting  there  is  no  trace.  His  own  special 
problem  was  one  different  from  theirs,  and  he  had 
to  find  his  own  way  of  solving  it. 


DWIGHT  W.   TRYON  159 

Even  in  one  of  his  earliest  landscapes  painted 
about  1 88 1,  after  his  return  from  Paris,  from 
studies  made  abroad,  there  is  a  decisively  individ- 
ual note.  It  is  a  scene  of  ploughing,  owned  by 
Mr.  Montross  —  a  stretch  of  dark  rich  soil,  with 
man  and  horses  pushing  the  furrow  toward  a  clear, 
cool  horizon.  There  is  a  larger  feeling  than 
Daubigny  would  have  portrayed ;  a  sterner  one, 
if  you  will,  certainly  one  more  bracing  in  its  sug- 
gestion of  vigorous  earth  and  breezy  sky,  and 
more  distinctly  inspired  than  Harpignies  could 
have  made  it,  with  the  sentiment  of  the  soil  and 
sky  in  their  relation  to  the  life  of  man.  Still,  the 
motive  of  the  picture  is  so  far  a  borrowed  one 
that,  although  it  has  the  feeling  of  a  New  Eng- 
land scene,  it  has  not  its  local  characteristics  of 
atmosphere  or  of  soil  colour,  lacking  the  more  sen- 
sitive quality  of  the  one,  and  the  tenderer  hues  of 
the  other.  While,  then,  this  picture  is  without 
the  subtle  qualities  that  mark  the  later  ones,  it 
has  a  clear,  strong  note  of  vigorous  earnestness, 
strongly  felt  and  strongly  realized.  Indeed,  it 
seems  entirely  characteristic  of  the  strength  of 
purpose  and  sturdy  qualities  which  are  the  founda- 
tion of  Tryon's  equipment,  both  as  a  man  and  a 
painter.  He  seems  to  have  grown  up  with  the 
smell  of  the  soil  in  his  nostrils  as  Millet  did, 
though  without  the  latter's  saddened  associations ; 


160  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

to  have  been  nourished  with  the  brisk  New  Eng- 
land air,  and  to  have  gathered  muscle  over  its 
ploughed  and  grassy  uplands.  The  keen  stimu- 
lus of  nature  went  through  and  through  him  early 
and  has  stayed  with  him,  so  that  his  art  partakes 
of  its  strength.  In  his  pictures,  one  finds,  I  think, 
a  stronger  foundation  than  only  that  of  good 
drawing  and  construction ;  an  earnest,  wholesale 
delight  in  the  strength  of  nature  as  being  some- 
thing in  which  he  himself  shares  ;  which,  indeed, 
has  so  grown  into  his  mind  and  life  that  its  expres- 
sion in  his  work  is  but  a  matter  of  course.  It  is 
a  part  of  his  most  serious  convictions,  so  that  his 
rendering  of  it  is  convincing. 

Put  into  words,  the  distinction  may  seem  a 
little  fine  drawn ;  but  I  feel  sure  that  our  expe- 
rience of  pictures  gives  it  substance.  How  often, 
for  example,  in  the  work  of  the  French  classicists 
we  may  see  illustrations  of  human  vigour,  on  which 
good  drawing  and  construction  have  been  expended, 
and  yet  their  suggestion  of  vigour  is  only  an  affec- 
tation ;  a  quality  aimed  at  by  the  painter,  but  not 
vitalized  by  strong,  earnest  convictions  of  his  own. 
What  a  protestation  of  strength  there  is  in  Sal- 
vator  Rosa's  landscapes,  and  how  little  real  con- 
vincingness !  And,  coming  to  the  landscapes  of 
our  own  time,  it  would  be  easy  to  quote  examples 
of  strong  drawing  and  construction  from  which, 


"rom  the  collection  of  Charles  L,  Freer,  Km). 

EARLY  SPRING,  NEW  ENGLAND. 
By  Dwight  W.  Tryon. 


DWIGHT  W.   TRYON  161 

however,  the  spirit  of  strength  is  lacking.  They 
are  the  work  of  men  who  mean  strongly,  but  are 
not  themselves  strong  men.  So  surely  does  per- 
sonal character,  or  lack  of  it,  show  in  a  painter's 
work,  not  the  mere  robustiousness  of  personal 
force,  but  the  settled,  earnest,  habitual  convictions 
that  are  the  elements  of  character.  And  quite 
as  evident  to  our  experience  in  pictures  is  the 
distinction  between  the  real  and  the  false  in  re- 
finement. Mere  subtlety  of  brush  work,  while  it 
may  create  for  a  while  an  illusion  of  refinement, 
will  not  satisfy  us  in  the  long  run. 

Many  of  Tryon's  landscapes  reach  a  pitch  of 
delicate  suggestion  in  the  rendering  of  soft  air, 
caressing  atmosphere,  and  shrouded  light  that  is 
unsurpassed  by  any  painter  in  this  country ;  for 
the  impression  is  much  deeper  than  that  of  an 
entrancing  skill  in  the  management  of  the  pig- 
ments. The  spirit  of  the  landscape  stole  into  his 
heart  when  a  boy,  and  has  abided  with  him  in 
his  manhood ;  he  is  so  much  a  child  of  New  Eng- 
land, sweetened  by  its  tenderer  influences  as  well 
as  nurtured  on  its  hardihood,  that,  sharing  its 
strength  and  refinement,  he  gives  expression  to 
himself  when  he  reproduces  these  qualities  in  his 
pictures.  Hence,  in  both  directions,  their  com- 
plete convincingness.  A  fact,  too,  which  helps 
to  justify   this   appreciation   is    that  his    pictures 


i6i  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

show  an  interest  in  so  many  moods  of  the  land' 
scape,  and  the  degree  of  force  or  of  subtlety  with 
which  he  renders  each  is  regulated  by  the  demand 
of  the  occasion.  You  cannot  divide  the  past 
twenty  years  of  his  productiveness  into  special 
periods  of  style ;  any  attempt  to  do  so  will  bring 
you  up  against  the  insurmountable  objection  of 
finding  that  two  canvases  of  very  different  feeling 
and  manner  of  painting  are  dated  the  same  year. 
Development,  necessarily,  there  has  been  in  style ; 
increased  acquisition  of  facility  and  the  power  to 
render  more  penetratingly  the  mood  of  nature  he 
is  studying.  But  evolution  of  motive  you  will 
scarcely  find.  That  from  the  first  has  been  real- 
istic ;  in  the  sense  that  the  landscape,  as  it  appears 
to  him  to  be,  affords  primarily  sufficient  incentive 
to  his  study. 

In  the  presence  of  nature  he  makes  studies, 
intent  for  the  time  being  solely  on  recording 
what  he  sees ;  later,  in  his  New  York  studio, 
the  poetic  suggestion  of  these  studies  will  come 
to  him,  and  he  composes  a  picture.  But  the 
process  is  from  realism  to  poetry,  and  not  con- 
trariwise, as  one  suspects  to  be  the  case  in  the 
poetical  landscapes  of  some  painters.  Tryon's 
way  is  not  unlike  a  man's  regard  for  a  good 
mother.  In  the  days  of  his  habitual  intercourse 
with  her,  it  is   her   dignity  and   sweetness   that 


D WIGHT   W.   TRYON  163 

grow  into  his  life,  the  changes  of  expression  in 
her  face  and  voice  that  win  upon  his  devotion, 
her  beautiful  reasonableness  that  is  accepted 
as  quite  a  natural  thing.  It  is  only  when  the 
son's  life  is  drawn  apart  from  the  habit  of  her 
presence  that  the  sentiment  of  a  mother's  love 
is  realized.  So  Tryon's  withdrawals  to  city  life 
allow  the  poetry  of  nature  to  steal  in  upon  his 
imagination ;  when  he  resumes  his  face-to-face 
communing  with  it,  the  life  habit  of  absorbed 
regard  comes  back  to  him.  The  result  of  this 
is  that  the  sentiment  of  his  pictures  grows  out 
of  the  actual,  and  represents  the  soul  of  a  fact. 
One  finds  one's  self  admiring  the  extraordinary 
truth  of  the  visual  impression,  and  then  often 
surprised  that  material  so  homely  should  yield 
such  abundance  of  poetic  suggestion ;  forgetting, 
for  the  moment,  that  poetry  is  not  an  element 
of  nature,  but  a  quality  of  the  painter's  mind, 
representing  the  degree  of  sincerity  and  elevation 
of  purpose  with  which  he  has  approached  his 
subject.  Tryon's  poetry  comes  of  the  associa- 
tions garnered  through  a  life  of  affectionate  inti- 
macy with  the  country  of  his  birth.  It  is  as  true 
and  spontaneous  as  filial  love. 

His  technical  skill  has  secured  the  respect  and 
admiration  of  his  fellow-painters.  They  assign 
him   that   final    title   of    approval,   "  a   painter's 


164  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

painter ; "  meaning  that  only  those  who  know  by 
practical  experience  the  difficulties  and  trials  of 
technique  can  properly  appreciate  his  ability  and 
resourcefulness,  and  certainly  not  implying,  as  is 
sometimes  the  case  when  this  expression  is  used, 
that  the  admirable  qualities  in  the  picture  are 
primarily  and  solely  technical  ones. 

Attempting  in  non-painter  language  to  sum- 
marize the  spirit  of  his  method,  one  may,  per- 
haps, reduce  it  to  the  equivalent  elements  in  his 
own  character  —  poise  and  sympathetic  penetra- 
tion. The  balanced  effect  of  his  landscapes  is 
very  notable :  a  harmony  of  colour  in  which 
there  is  no  jar,  a  similar  equipoise  in  the  details 
introduced,  a  delicate  adjustment  of  strength 
and  tenderness  and  of  sentiment  to  facts ;  an 
ensemble  of  uninterrupted  unity.  In  the  matter 
of  sympathetic  penetration — a  rather  clumsy  ex- 
pression for  which  I  can  find  no  happy  alter- 
native —  his  method  is  even  more  remarkable.  I 
allude  to  the  affectionate  studiousness  with  which 
he  analyzes  the  significant  constituents  of  the 
landscape,  and  to  the  degree  in  which  his  eye 
penetrates  the  secret  of  the  envelope  of  atmos- 
phere, of  that  particular  quality  of  atmosphere 
characteristic  of  New  England. 

I  would  cite  the  "  Early  Spring,  New  England," 
not  as  an  example  of  one  of  his  most  beautiful 


DWIGHT  W.   TRYON  165 

landscapes,  but  as  a  triumph  of  technical  resource, 
to  which  was  awarded  the  gold  medal  in  1898 
at  the  Carnegie  exhibition  in  Pittsburg.  The 
foreground  is  a  pasture  with  a  brook  winding 
through  it,  and  several  leafless  trees  which  spread 
their  delicate  network  of  branches  against  a  clear, 
open  sky  that  reddens  slightly  near  the  horizon. 
Beyond  is  cultivated  land,  partly  covered  with  the 
brilliant  green  of  young  vegetation,  and  partly  red, 
upturned  soil,  with  a  team  ploughing.  Farther 
back  are  gently  rising  hills. 

The  front  of  the  picture  is  painted  with  remark- 
ably delicate  detail,  and  in  the  distant  parts  there 
is  a  similar  suggestion  conveyed  of  the  worthiness 
of  the  scene  to  be  minutely  studied.  There  is  not 
a  square  inch  in  the  composition  that  is  without 
individual  interest,  and  yet  this  elaborate  mosaic 
unifies  into  a  single  impression  of  spaciousness ; 
for  the  relative  significance  of  each  plane  in  the 
picture  has  been  so  shrewdly  realized.  The  eye 
is  invited  to  travel  back  to  the  remotest  part  of 
the  ground  and  up  into  the  expanse  of  sky.  This 
is  the  primary  invitation  of  the  picture  as  would 
be  that  of  the  actual  scene ;  and  then  follows,  if 
you  have  eyes  for  it,  the  beckoning  in  this  and 
that  direction  to  the  separate  interest  of  the 
various  parts.  This  accurate  rendering  of  the 
effect  of  intervening  atmosphere  upon  the  reced- 


166  AMERICAN    MASTERS 

ing  forms  and  colours  brings  the  atmosphere  itself 
into  the  picture ;  a  softly  stealing  animation,  not 
yet  nimble,  but  gently  quickening  into  life.  It  is, 
indeed,  a  picture  of  quite  extraordinary  subtlety ; 
and  so  much  the  more  a  triumph  of  accomplish- 
ment because  it  is  a  very  large  one,  and  the  mere 
problem  of  filling  such  an  extent  of  canvas  with  the 
evidences  of  minute  observation,  so  that  it  should 
still  hold  well  together,  was  a  most  formidable  one. 
There  was  no  possibility  of  evasion  or  of  falling  back 
upon  convenient  generalizations:  the  problem,  once 
grasped,  had  to  be  solved  to  its  ultimate  conclusion. 
Yet  the  very  magnitude  of  canvas  and  of  prob- 
lem impairs  somewhat  the  intimacy  of  feeling  in 
the  picture,  and  for  all  its  abounding  skill  we  shall 
not  reckon  it  among  Tryon's  choicest  work.  In 
that  he  gives  us,  when  he  wills,  the  sense  of 
spaciousness  within  a  much  smaller  frame,  and, 
compassing  it  around  so  discreetly,  makes  its 
subtle  appeal  by  so  much  the  more  insinuating. 
These  comparatively  smaller  pictures  are  too 
numerous  and  different  in  character  to  allow  of  de- 
tailed allusion,  yet  one  may  single  out  a  few  such 
gems  as  "  The  Rising  Moon "  and  "  Sunrise," 
owned  by  Mr.  Charles  L.  Freer ;  "  After  Showers 
—  June,"  owned  by  Colonel  Frank  J.  Hecker; 
"The  Meadow  —  Evening,"  owned  by  Mr.  A. 
T.  Sanders  ;  "  Springtime,"  owned  by  Mr.  George 


DWIGHT   W.   TRYON  167 

A.  Hearn ;  and  a  "  Winter  Evening  "  and  "  Early- 
Spring,"  the  property  of  Mr.  N.  E.  Montross. 

These  are  masterpieces,  —  and  the  list  is  incom- 
plete,—  pictures  that  you  may  study  from  the 
strictest  standpoint  of  technical  excellence,  and 
that  exert  an  influence  upon  the  imagination  which 
one  may  believe  will  be  felt  by  those  who  come 
after  us  as  fully  as  by  ourselves. 

In  considering  American  landscapes,  there  is 
more  than  a  little  tendency  to  dwell  upon  the 
names  of  the  painters  who  are  dead,  regardless  of 
the  fact  that  the  traditions  which  they  established 
are  being  maintained.  Among  those  who  are 
maintaining  them,  Tryon  is  conspicuous,  and  in  a 
way  that  is,  perhaps,  more  distinctive  than  theirs. 
He  represents  much  more  closely  the  kind  of 
contribution  that  the  American  temperament  may 
be  expected  to  make  to  the  progress  of  painting. 
For  unless  painting  can  continue  to  reflect  the 
evolution  of  human  progress,  it  is,  after  all,  only 
a  "  dead  language."  But  it  is  landscapes  such  as 
Tryon's  that  prove  its  vitality.  They  represent 
the  combination  of  qualities  that  differentiate 
American  civilization  in  its  worthiest  form  from 
that  of  other  countries  and  of  past  times.  They 
combine  a  largeness  of  outlook  with  alert  sen- 
sibility to  impressions ;  being,  at  once,  big  in 
character  and  minutely  subtle. 


XII 
HORATIO    WALKER 


HORATIO    WALKER 

UPON  his  first  appearance  last  year  as  a  con- 
tributor to  the  exhibition  of  the  British 
Institute  of  Water  Colours,  Horatio  Walker's 
picture,  "  The  Potato  Pickers,"  was  prominently 
hung,  and  he  himself  was  elected  a  member. 
Considering  the  fine  record  of  the  Institute  and 
its  high  rank  among  water  colour  societies,  such 
instant  recognition  of  a  newcomer  was  very  notable. 
But  it  is  just  the  way  in  which  an  artist  of 
Walker's  calibre  is  likely  to  make  his  impression 
—  at  once  and  authoritatively ;  for  he  is  a  painter 
of  unusual  personal  force,  and  of  a  persuasiveness 
quite  as  remarkable,  qualities  not  always  found  in 
combination,  but,  when  united,  irresistible.  And 
these  artistic  qualities  are  the  counterparts  of  simi- 
lar elements  in  his  character  as  a  man.  His  is  a 
forceful  personality  of  moral  as  well  as  mental 
force.  How  much  this  means  !  There  is  a  kind 
of  forceful  person  who  slaps  you  on  the  back  in 
the  street,  and  you  probably  consider  him  a  nui- 
sance; and  there  is  a  kind  of  painter  who  would 

171 


1 72  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

violently  arrest  your  attention  by  the  bravery  of 
his  brush  strokes  or  some  surprising  crash  of 
colour  scheme  or  chiaroscuro. 

In  such  forcefulness  there  is  a  certain  effrontery 
that  one  resents  at  once ;  or  which,  if  it  arouse  a 
little  momentary  curiosity  or  even  interest,  will  in 
the  long  run  be  followed  by  intolerable  weariness. 
For  it  is  almost  entirely  a  mere  display  of  manual 
gymnastics,  an  exploitation  of  self.  There  may  be 
a  little  mind  behind  it,  but  it  will  be  the  quality 
of  mind  that  is  simply  of  the  active  kind,  enam- 
oured of  its  own  activity.  It  is  not  regulated  by 
the  moral  sense,  responsible  to  self-control,  con- 
tributory to  some  serious  and  absorbing  purpose, 
involving  a  realization  of  the  intense  meaningful- 
ness  of  nature  and  life.  This  is  the  foundation 
quality  of  what  is  big  in  life  and  art :  a  noble 
seriousness  that  penetrates  the  facts,  and  lifts  them 
upon  the  elevation  of  its  own  spirit  to  the  dignity 
of  what  is  grandest  and  most  abiding  in  the  uni- 
versal scheme. 

Painters  who  possess  this  faculty  are  apt  to  con- 
centrate their  sympathy  and  force  upon  some  par- 
ticular phase  of  life,  and  Walker  has  found  the 
pivot  point  for  his  in  the  island  of  Orleans,  in 
the  St.  Lawrence,  some  twenty  miles  northeast 
of  Quebec.  Here  the  descendants  of  the  early 
French  settlers  still  retain  the  simple  faith  and 


HORATIO   WALKER  173 

habits  and  fine  ingenuousness  of  the  peasants  of 
•northern  France;  a  sturdy  race,  close  to  the  soil, 
and  drawing  dignity  as  well  as  nourishment  there- 
from, perpetuating  their  origin  even  in  their  belong- 
ings :  the  domestic  utensils,  the  farm  implements, 
in  the  racial  characteristics  of  their  clever  little 
horses  and  oxen,  and  in  the  very  fashioning  of 
their  harness.  Nor  was  the  singling  out  of  this 
Acadia  merely  the  happy  discovery  of  a  painter 
in  search  of  the  picturesque.  It  was  a  harking 
back  to  the  associations  of  his  boyhood ;  for, 
though  Walker's  later  youth  was  spent  in  Roch- 
ester, N.Y.,  he  is  a  Canadian  by  birth,  the  son 
of  an  English  army  officer. 

It  is  a  beautiful  thing  for  an  artist  when  he  can 
thus  graft  his  maturity  on  to  the  roots  of  his  early 
impressions. 

"  A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts." 

How  often  the  will  passes,  we  know  not  whither, 
like  the  wind ;  and  the  thoughts,  swallowed  up  in 
the  materialism  of  far  other  thoughts,  come  back 
to  us  in  later  life  only  as  random  visions  of  what 
might  have  been  !  Indeed,  it  is  beautiful  for  the 
artist  when  he  can  recover  that  boy's  will,  and  link 
the  early  thoughts  on  to  the  maturer  thoughts  of 
manhood.     This  way  lie  sincerity,  depth  and  ful- 


174  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

ness  of  conviction,  and  ripest  fruitfulness.  It  has 
been  difficult  for  American  artists  to  maintain  this 
continuity  of  evolution,  since  they  have  had  to 
travel  far  for  instruction,  and  the  way  of  return  to 
the  associations  of  the  past  has  not  seemed  clear. 
Still,  many  have  found  it,  and  perhaps  a  volume 
of  criticism  might  be  based  upon  this  one  fact ; 
and  it  might  be  shown  that  those  whom  we  most 
admire  as  powerful  painters,  for  the  reality  of  what 
they  have  to  say  and  their  impressive  way  of  say- 
ing it,  are  the  ones  who,  in  their  art,  have  got  back 
closest,  either  to  the  actual  scenes  or  to  the  mental 
associations  of  their  youth. 

But  besides  the  quality  of  force  in  Walker  and 
his  art,  there  is  the  other  one  of  persuasiveness. 
You  may  remember  his  "  Oxen  Drinking,"  —  the 
two  broad-fronted,  patient  heads  side  by  side  at  the 
water  trough,  their  driver,  in  blue  shirt,  standing 
by  them,  and  the  rich  brown  backs  of  the  massive 
beasts  showing  against  the  dark-gray  horizon.  For 
the  sky,  reaching  far  up  above  the  group,  has  been 
whipped  into  turbulence  by  the  wind ;  it  is  slaty- 
hued,  threatening  storm.  How  grandiose  this  ele- 
mental fermentation  !  How  significant  the  bulk 
and  solidity  of  the  beasts !  There  is  force  all 
through  the  picture,  the  force  of  disturbance  and 
the  force  of  immobility ;  for  the  beasts  are 
grounded    like    boulders ;    the   man,   motionless. 


HORATIO   WALKER  175 

It  is  a  force  that  compels  attention  and  communi- 
cates its  own  strength  to  one's  self;  and  then  suc- 
ceeds an  infinite  suggestion  of  restfulness.  The 
heavens  may  labour,  but  for  man  and  oxen  the 
appointed  task  is  done,  and  they  enter  into  their 
rest.  And  note  that  this  suggestion  is  not  arrived 
at  by  a  process  of  the  intellect,  but  by  pure  sen- 
sation. 

It  is  the  colour  scheme  that  conveys  it ;  that 
note  of  blue,  so  clear  and  flute-like,  against  the 
sullen  grayness  of  the  sky ;  the  sobering,  comple- 
mentary note  of  tawny  brown,  even  the  chromatic 
variations  of  the  gray  sky  that  vibrate  like  music. 
For  all  its  menace,  the  sky  is  beautiful,  and  in 
union  with  the  other  notes  of  the  scheme  produces 
a  throbbing  tenderness  of  harmony  that  is  irresisti- 
bly appealing.  It  is  through  his  colour  schemes 
that  Walker  tempers  his  force  with  persuasiveness. 
For  he  is  one  of  that  small  band  to  whom  colour 
is  as  essential  a  part  of  their  expression  as  notes 
are  to  the  singer.  You  may  see  pictures  in  which 
the  colour  is  little  more  than  tints  to  differentiate 
the  objects ;  others  in  which  it  is  merely  an  accu- 
rate rendering  of  the  phenomena  studied ;  then 
others,  again,  wherein  the  colour  is  as  inseparable 
from  the  conception  as  fragrance  from  the  rose. 
It  is  essential,  interpenetrating  the  structure  of  the 
picture,  complete  and  indivisible  as  the  compo- 


176  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

nents  of  a  passage  in  music ;  structurally,  aestheti- 
cally, and  intellectually  essential.  .  /hile  one  will 
find  this  true  feeling  for  colour  in  all  his  work,  it 
is  only  in  the  later  ones,  as  one  would  expect,  that 
it  reaches  its  fullest  subtlety  of  expression. 

One  of  his  early  pictures  is  the  "  Milking,"  a 
large  canvas  to  which  was  awarded  the  gold  medal, 
by  the  vote  of  exhibitors,  at  the  exhibition  of  the 
American  Art  Association  in  1887.  The  scene 
is  a  stable  interior,  with  drab  walls,  in  which  a 
woman  in  a  blue  gown  is  milking  a  black  and 
white  cow,  whose  calf  is  standing  near.  The  light 
enters  by  a  window  on  the  right,  and  percolates 
through  the  dim  recesses  of  the  stable.  At  first 
one  is  conscious  of  the  quiet  beast  standing  across 
the  picture,  turning  its  mild  head  toward  us,  and 
of  the  woman  in  half  shadow,  a  strong-bodied 
form  in  the  easy  attitude  of  a  habitual  occupation  ; 
but  by  degrees  the  eye  penetrates  the  surrounding 
gloom,  and  discovers  another  figure  and  other 
objects  in  the  background.  In  this  gradual 
evolving  of  the  subject,  art  has  followed  nature, 
and  one  feels  also  the  evidence  of  a  dignified 
reserve,  as  of  a  man  who  does  not  wear  his  heart 
upon  his  sleeve  or  admit  you  hurriedly  into  the 
privacy  of  his  thought,  but  assures  himself  first 
of  your  sympathy  and  then  bit  by  bit  unfolds  to 
you  his  purpose.     Another  characteristic  of  this 


HORATIO   WALKER  177 

picture  is  its  grandiose  passivity,  its  suggestion 
of  a  liberal  acquiescence  in  nature's  plan.  We 
shall  find  this  same  large  outlook,  under  various 
guises,  in  a  great  number  of  Walker's  pictures. 
Represented  most  differently,  one  meets  with  it 
in  "  Morning,"  in  which  a  flock  of  sheep  have 
just  emerged  from  a  shed  and  are  beginning  to 
nose  about  the  meadow,  which  stretches  behind 
them,  glistening  with  dew  and  bounded  by  a 
coppice  of  delicately  branched  trees,  through  which 
the  morning  sky,  just  quickening  with  light,  is 
visible. 

Here  again  is  a  suggestion  of  the  routine  in 
nature's  scheme :  the  awakening  of  day,  the 
following  on  of  the  beasts  to  play  their  appointed 
part.  And  I  think  we  shall  be  conscious  also,  for 
this  is  a  later  picture,  penetrated  with  subtlety  of 
manner  and  meaning,  of  an  extraordinary  sugges- 
tion of  the  remoteness  of  nature  at  this  silent,  un- 
disturbed hour.  It  is  a  repetition  of  an  occurrence 
as  old  as  any  time  we  wot  of,  and  it  links  this 
modern  scene  in  our  imagination  with  Virgil's 
"  Eclogues,"  with  Homer's  "  Odyssey  "  and  the 
Hebrew  Laban's  flocks,  forming  a  link  in  the 
endless  chain  of  pastoral  recollection,  at  once 
the  most  enduring  and  most  lovable  of  all 
our  impressions  of  nature.  Nor  let  us  omit  to 
notice  the  remarkable  technical  skill  involved  in 


178  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

the  painting  of  this  stretch  of  meadow,  the  exqui- 
site gradations  of  tone  in  the  silvered  greens  as 
they  recede  from  the  eye,  the  delicate  stir  of  ani- 
mation in  the  grass,  and  also  in  the  painting  of 
the  sky,  which  is  kept  so  surely  behind  the  trees, 
while  its  gathering  volume  of  light  steals  gently 
through  them.  So  complete  is  the  unity  of  the 
picture,  so  musical  its  vibration,  that  from  the 
whole  scene  there  seems  to  exhale  a  delicate  sigh 
that  floats  through  the  fragrant  soundlessness  of 
awakening  nature. 

Such  technical  accomplishment  is  the  outcome 
of  Walker's  penetrating  earnestness.  Like  most 
of  the  best  landscape  painters  of  every  country, 
he  is  entirely  self-taught.  The  appeal  of  nature,  to 
one  who  is  a  true  lover  of  it,  is  so  personal  that 
no  other  man's  method  will  avail  to  express  what 
he  feels.  He  is  compelled  to  discover  his  own 
way  of  utterance,  conforming  in  its  individuality 
to  the  particular  quality  of  his  sincerity.  With 
Walker  the  sincerity  is  characterized  not  only  by 
a  determination  to  reach  the  truth,  but  by  an 
instinct  for  the  larger  kinds  of  truth,  those  which 
need  no  enforcing,  but  make  their  own  signifi- 
cance slowly  and  surely  recognized.  Nothing  is 
more  conspicuous  in  his  best  work  than  the  re- 
serve with  which  everything  is  stated.  He  puts 
forth    his    strength    with    calculated    orderliness, 


HORATIO   WALKER  179 

gradually  letting  one  into  the  heart  of  his  mean- 
ing, continually  stimulating  and  rewarding  by 
further  study,  and  leaving  one  at  last  with  the 
consciousness  that  he  has  held  back  part  of  what 
he  had  in  mind.  He  leads  one,  indeed,  to  the 
dim  border  land  where  one  says  good-by  to  facts 
and  yields  only  to  the  imagination.  In  this 
respect  he  is  nearer  to  Israels  than  to  Millet  in 
his  attitude  toward  peasant  life.  The  peasant 
of  Gruchy  was  so  profoundly  impressed  with  the 
pitifulness  of  the  peasant's  life  that  his  story  of 
labour  with  all  its  force  is  a  restricted  one.  He 
missed  its  nobler  aspect  in  relation  to  the  uni- 
versal scheme,  and  feels  only  its  heavy  fatalism. 
Israels  has  a  wider  sympathy,  which  can  discover 
beauty  in  the  monotonous  routine,  the  beauty  of 
little  observances  well  and  faithfully  done,  and  the 
quiet  intervals  of  rest  and  homely  joy  that  inter- 
vene. But  while  Walker  is  akin  to  the  Dutch 
artist  in  the  embracing  tenderness  of  his  vision,  he 
excels  him  in  breadth  and  force.  Israels  continu- 
ally invites  you  to  look  in ;  Walker,  to  look  in 
also,  but  to  look  around  as  well. 

In  this  respect  he  reminds  one  of  Troyon, 
whose  magnificent  landscapes  and  grand  cattle  are 
big  with  nature's  fecundity  and  strength.  There 
is  not  a  little  of  these  two  men  in  Walker ;  of 
Israels'  tenderness  and  Troyon's  breadth.     Even 


180  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

in  so  stirring  a  subject  as  the  large  "  Ploughing  in 
Acadia,"  painted  about  1887,  there  is  this  infu- 
sion of  tenderness.  The  three  horses  straining 
abreast  are  full  of  vigour;  they  tug  with  a  sus- 
tained effort  in  which  the  continuity  of  the  move- 
ment is  finely  expressed ;  the  high  gear  above  their 
saddles,  covered  with  sheepskin,  tosses  in  the  air 
over  their  shaggy  arched  necks  ;  the  old  man  at  the 
plough  tail  is  stocky  and  hale ;  lusty  green  weeds 
have  their  roots  in  the  strong  earth,  and  the  sky 
is  full  of  bracing  weather.  Through  and  through 
it  is  a  sturdy  picture ;  but  note,  also,  the  affec- 
tionateness  with  which  the  head  of  the  nearest 
horse  is  rendered.  He  is  of  the  Normandy  breed, 
the  most  willing  of  servants,  the  most  intelligent 
of  animal  companions.  His  eye  is  bright,  the 
nostril  inflated;  he  is  rejoicing  in  his  strength;  and 
later  on,  when  labour  is  over,  he  will  nose  into  his 
master's  jacket  and  both  will  feel  like  friends  to 
one  another.  This  is  the  wholesome,  natural  view 
of  the  peasant's  labour,  when  it  is  really  close  to 
the  soil  and  uncorrupted  by  a  cheap  press ;  man 
and  the  animals  going  about  their  appointed  task 
until  the  day  is  done,  and  finding  companionship 
with  one  another  and  with  nature ;  and  it  is  not 
without  a  quiet  happiness  of  its  own. 

This  ploughing  scene'  reminds  me  of  a  later  one, 
painted  a  few  years  ago,  of  two  oxen  coming  up 


HORATIO   WALKER  181 

the  furrow  with  their  massive,  leisurely  movement, 
while  behind  them  the  light  is  mounting  up  in 
floods  of  crimson,  that  overflow  upon  the  broad 
backs  of  the  beasts  and  lap  the  cool,  glistening 
earth.  It  represents  the  first  moments  in  nature's 
daily  awakening  to  life  and  in  man's  daily  routine 
of  labour.  Both  in  the  sky  and  on  the  earth 
there  is  the  steady  gathering  of  force ;  not  a  burst 
of  energy,  but  that  massing  of  energy  that  will  not 
readily  expend  itself.  I  have  heard  it  remarked 
that  the  oxen  look  tired  already,  and  the  men 
likewise ;  but  perhaps  it  is  rather  a  passivity  of 
feeling  that  is  conveyed,  that  slow,  unquestioning 
resignation,  that  is  at  once  so  pathetic  and  heroic 
in  the  true  peasant. 

And  in  another  way  many  of  these  canvases  of 
Walker's  involve  this  heroic  suggestion.  While 
close  studies  of  pastoral  and  agricultural  life  in 
a  portion  of  this  continent  to-day,  they  have  a 
more  universal  significance  and  set  one's  imagina- 
tion back  in  the  Old  World  that  we  call  Homeric ; 
times  of  spaciousness  and  simplicity,  when  we 
fancy  that  man's  strength  was  in  closest  affinity 
with  nature's ;  times  of  wholesomeness  and  poise 
of  mind  and  body,  when  man  lived  by  nature's 
rule,  and  labour  was  loving. 

This  universal  suggestion  is  the  product  of  the 
force,  united  with  persuasiveness,  that  one  marked 


i8i  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

at  the  outset  as  characteristic  of  Walker  and  his 
work.  It  comes  of  the  large  seriousness  with 
which  he  thinks  and  works,  of  the  true  perspec- 
tive through  which  he  views  his  subject,  wherein 
facts  and  sentiment  take  their  due  place  not  only 
in  the  foreground,  but  in  their  relation  to  a  distant 
horizon.  These  risings  and  settings  of  the  sun, 
that  he  loves  so  much,  have  run  their  course 
through  ages ;  not  a  little  of  his  love  for  them 
no  doubt  is  due  to  their  suggestion  of  infinity  in 
relation  to  the  life  of  man ;  and  that  life,  too,  he 
prefers  to  view  as  itself  a  heritage  of  the  ages. 

For  many  of  us  life  is  now  a  complicated  affair, 
with  much  whirring  of  human  machinery  within 
ourselves  and  around  us ;  yet  it  still  has  elemental 
facts  and  emotions.  The  painter  who  can  express 
these  with  their  personal,  local  significance,  and 
show,  as  well,  their  relation  to  the  universal,  is  one 
whose  work  will  be  likely  to  endure. 


XIII 
GILBERT   STUART 


XIII 
GILBERT  STUART 

"  A  NOTHER  Kin§  arose  "iuA  knew  not 
x\  Joseph,"  and  so  it  goes  stilL  Most 
American  children  are  familiar  with  the  so-called 
"Athenanim  Portrait  of  George  Washington,'* 
yet  probably  very  few,  even  of  their  parents,  know 
the  name  of  the  artist,  Gilbert  Stuart.  We  have 
got  into  the  habit  of  dating  the  growth  of  modern 
American  painting  from  1875,  and  with  some 
reasonableness,  for  that  was  the  period  at  which 
students  began  to  arrive  home  from  Munich  and 
Paris  in  sufficient  numbers  to  make  their  arrival 
felt.  Yet  twenty-five  years  earner,  about  the  tune 
that  George  Inness  was  starting  for  Europe,  Wil- 
ham  M.  Hunt  had  returned,  bringing  with  him 
pictures  of  the  Barbizon  painters  and  introducing 
their  principles  of  nature  study.  We  are  apt  to 
dismiss  the  painting  of  the  ptevious  half-century 
as  icpirarnting  only  the  draggled  ends  of  the 
English  influence  rudely  scveied  by  the  Revolu- 
tion; forgetting  that  the  period  is  finked  on  to 
the  Augustan  age  of  English  painting,  to  Rey- 

* 


1 86  AMERICAN    MASTERS 

nolds,  Gainsborough,  and  the  somewhat  later 
Constable.  For  Gilbert  Stuart  was  a  contempo- 
rary of  all  three,  and  to  some  extent  a  rival  of 
Reynolds,  even  in  London,  and  was  born  also 
within  the  lifetime  of  the  first  of  the  great  English- 
men, William  Hogarth.  Stuart,  moreover,  was 
not  a  follower  of  others,  but  a  distinct  and  forceful 
individuality  that  played  a  leading  role  in  the 
stirring  drama  of  his  times.  He  was,  with  little 
doubt,  the  first  of  American  masters  of  painting. 

There  is  a  romance  in  every  life,  however  gray 
and  level,  but  in  Stuart's  the  romance  foamed 
upon  the  surface.  Perhaps  he  had  inherited  it; 
for  his  father,  a  native  of  Perth,  in  Scotland, 
reached  this  country  shortly  after  the  battle  of 
Culloden  Moor,  that  shattered  the  prospects  of 
the  Pretender ;  and  there  is  more  than  a  suspicion 
that  his  espousal  of  a  lost  cause  had  made  it  well 
to  put  the  ocean  between  himself  and  his  past. 
However  that  may  be,  he  built  himself  a  little 
mill  with  a  gambrel  roof,  at  the  head  of  the  Peta- 
quamscott  Pond,  in  Narragansett  county,  R.I., 
and  settled  down  to  the  quiet  occupation  of 
grinding  snuff".  He  had  married,  and  in  1755, 
after  several  other  children,  came  a  boy,  who  re- 
ceived the  name  of  his  father,  and  was  duly 
entered  in  the  baptismal  registry  as  "  son  of  the 
snuff  grinder."     But  in  time  the  mill  proved  un- 


GILBERT  STUART  187 

profitable,  and  the  family  migrated  to  Newport, 
where  the  mother  superintended  the  boy's  educa- 
tion, the  Rev.  Mr.  Bissert  instructing  him  in 
Latin.  He  seems  to  have  been  quick  at  learning 
but  averse  to  study,  being  of  a  frolicsome  disposi- 
tion and  addicted  also  to  drawing.  None  re- 
mains of  Stuart's  early  sketches,  but  one  day 
some  of  them  were  seen  by  Dr.  William  Hunter, 
as  he  was  paying  a  professional  visit  to  the  family. 
The  kind  and  discriminating  physician  invited 
the  boy  to  call  upon  him,  and  when  he  came  pre- 
sented to  him  a  box  of  paints  and  brushes,  —  a 
day  of  days  in  the  child's  life,  to  be  marked  with 
red,  and  to  be  looked  back  upon  in  the  after 
years  with  thanksgiving. 

What  a  pretty  picture  it  presents  of  those  brave 
old  colonial  days,  when  simplicity  and  culture 
went  hand  in  hand.  It  is  very  sad,  of  course, 
that  the  poor  boy  should  have  lived  too  early  to 
enjoy  the  blessings  of  a  school  system,  based  on 
the  strictest  principles  of  pedagogy,  graded  to  an 
average  not  inconveniently  high,  making  much  of 
words  and  relegating  ideas  to  the  proper  limbo  of 
things  that  are  unpractical  and,  therefore,  useless. 
How  pathetic,  too,  the  unique  event  of  this  paint- 
box in  view  of  the  profusion  of  presents  which 
our  children  now  enjoy !  Truly,  there  is  much 
room  for  complacent  congratulation  over  improved 


i88  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

conditions.  Yet  it  is  a  little  disconcerting  to 
notice  how  much  the  less  favoured  children  made 
of  their  meagre  opportunities ;  and  we  may  begin 
to  wonder  whether  education  —  the  leading  of 
the  child  step  by  step  to  a  fuller  and  fuller  con- 
sciousness of  the  realities  of  life  —  and  instruction 
—  the  laying  of  brick  upon  brick  to  build  an  edi- 
fice of  character  —  may  not  be  a  thing  outside  of 
systems,  and  to  be  looked  for  rather  in  the  daily 
contact  of  the  child's  expanding  personality  with 
good  wholesome  personalities  around  it.  Perhaps, 
after  all,  the  quiet  spaciousness  of  those  old 
colonial  days  was  a  fine  nursery  for  men,  just 
as  the  western  forests  nurtured  Lincoln  and  many 
a  quiet  home  to-day  is  fostering  the  goodness  and 
greatness  of  the  future. 

Stuart's  earliest  picture  is  said  to  be  a  portrait 
of  Mr.  Thomas  R.  Hunter,  of  Newport,  and  we 
read  that  when  he  was  thirteen  years  old  he  re- 
ceived a  commission  to  paint  portraits  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  John  Bannister.  Two  years  later  a 
Scotch  painter,  Cosmo  Alexander,  arrived  in  New- 
port and  interested  himself  in  the  boy's  efforts, 
giving  Lm  instruction,  and  when  he  returned  to 
Scotland  two  years  afterward,  taking  him  with 
him.  One  notes  how  readily  the  boy  ingratiated 
himself  into  the  hearts  of  those  with  whom  he 
came  in  contact,  a  trait  that  marks  each  stage  of 


GILBERT   STUART  189 

his  subsequent  career.  He  had  a  quiet,  self-con- 
tained demeanour,  with  a  store  of  spirit  that  could 
flash  out  enthusiastically  upon  occasion  and  in  a 
very  tactful  way ;  with  humour,  too,  and  satire  as 
he  grew  older,  and  with  a  growing  brusqueness 
and  even  intolerance,  toward  his  later  life.  The 
urbanity,  discreetness,  and  humour  he  would  have 
inherited  from  his  Scotch  father,  drawing  from  his 
Welsh  ancestry  on  the  mother's  side  the  ardour  of 
his  character  and  his  love  of  music.  For  his  edu- 
cation had  included  the  practice  of  music  —  he 
could  play  the  organ  and  was  skilful  on  other 
instruments.  He  must  have  been,  indeed,  a  per- 
sonality of  rare  graciousness. 

The  stay  in  Scotland  was  short,  for  Alexander 
died  very  soon  after  their  arrival.  He  had  estab- 
lished his  ward  in  the  University  of  Glasgow,  and, 
dying,  committed  him  to  the  care  of  Sir  George 
Chambers,  who  himself  died  shortly  after.  The 
youth  pined  for  home,  and  managed  to  get  passage 
back  to  America  on  a  collier.  With  a  friend 
named  Waterhouse  he  hired  a  model  to  study 
from,  "a  strong-muscled  blacksmith."  It  was 
characteristic  of  the  bent  of  choice  that  reappears 
in  his  mature  work :  a  love  of  strength  and  reso- 
lution, delighting  in  the  robust  physical  qualities 
or  in  the  strong  evidences  of  mental  and  moral 
character  which  time  has  impressed  upon  the  face. 


i9o  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

In  1775  he  again  set  out  for  Great  Britain,  and 
this  time  reached  London.  It  was  not  until  he 
had  suffered  much  privation  that  he  summoned 
up  courage  to  call  upon  his  countryman,  Benjamin 
West.  The  great  man  was  entertaining  friends 
and  not  disposed  to  be  interrupted ;  but  the  gen- 
tleman who  left  the  party  to  interview  the  caller, 
found  him  to  be  a  connection  of  friends  of  his  in 
Philadelphia,  and  ushered  him  into  the  assemblage. 
The  young  man's  demeanour  pleased  West,  who 
invited  him  to  bring  his  work  for  inspection, 
admitted  him  as  a  pupil,  and  in  1777  installed 
him  in  his  own  household.  By  this  time,  besides 
painting  under  West,  with  Trumbull  among  his 
fellow-students,  he  was  attending  the  discourses 
of  Sir  Joshua  and  studying  anatomy  in  Dr.  Cruik- 
shank's  classes  at  the  Academy.  His  sojourn  in 
West's  studio  extended  over  eight  years,  although 
during  that  time  he  was  engaged  on  some  inde- 
pendent work ;  the  Duke  of  Northumberland,  for 
example,  sending  for  him  to  Sion  House,  on  the 
Thames,  to  paint  two  portraits.  From  being  the 
pupil  he  became  the  assistant  of  his  master,  until 
the  painter  Dance  advised  him  to  set  up  a  studio 
of  his  own,  which,  with  West's  approbation,  he 
did  in  1785. 

His  success  was  immediate ;  people  of  wit  and 
fashion  thronged  his  rooms ;  he  "  tasked  himself 


GILBERT  STUART  191 

to  six  sitters  a  day,"  then  flung  his  work  aside  and 
devoted  himself  to  society,  living  in  great  splen- 
dour and  spending  freely.  During  this  period  he 
painted  Louis  XVI,  George  III,  and  the  Prince 
of  Wales,  subsequently  George  IV ;  while  among 
his  other  sitters  were  John  Kemble,  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  and  Benjamin  West.  He  had  mar- 
ried Charlotte  Coates,  daughter  of  Dr.  Coates  of 
Berkshire,  and  with  her  moved,  in  1788,  to  Dublin, 
where  he  painted  many  eminent  people  and  was 
welcomed  in  society  for  his  personal  gifts.  But 
he  was  eager  to  paint  George  Washington. 

It  is  memorable  that  Stuart,  when  once  his  posi- 
tion was  assured,  indulged  himself  in  the  privilege 
of  refusing  many  sitters.  Notwithstanding  his 
enormous  expenses  and  the  embarrassments  to 
which  they  frequently  led,  he  kept  his  artistic  con- 
science intact  from  the  smudge  of  mere  money- 
making,  and  confined  himself  to  those  sitters  who 
appealed  to  his  particular  temperament  and 
afforded  him  the  best  opportunity  of  making  a 
good  picture.  So  he  was  willing  to  throw  up 
all  the  golden  opportunities  which  Europe  pre- 
sented, that  he  might  have  the  privilege  and 
satisfaction  of  painting  the  one  man  whose  heroic 
qualities  had  most  fascinated  his  imagination. 

He  reached  New  York  in  1792,  and  two  years 
later  proceeded  to  Philadelphia,  where  Congress 


i92  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

was  in  session.  Establishing  his  studio  on  the 
southeast  corner  of  Fifth  and  Chestnut  streets,  he 
painted  three  portraits  of  Washington  from  life. 
The  first,  which  showed  the  right  side  of  the  face, 
was  destroyed  by  the  artist  as  not  being  satisfac- 
tory, and  only  three,  or  perhaps  four,  copies  are 
known  to  exist.  Then  followed  the  full-length 
portrait,  painted  for  Lord  Lansdowne,  which 
shows  the  left  side  of  the  face  and  is  now  in 
London.  The  third,  against  Washington's  own 
desire,  was  executed  at  the  earnest  solicitation  of 
his  wife  and  was  left  intentionally  unfinished. 
This  picture,  which  shows  the  left  side  of  the 
face,  was  purchased  from  Stuart's  widow  and  pre- 
sented to  the  Boston  Athenaeum.  Known  as  the 
"Athenaeum"  head,  it  now  hangs  in  the  Boston 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  and  over  fifty  copies  of  it 
by  Stuart's  hands  have  been  traced. 

Unlike  Charles  Willson  Peale,  who  made,  in 
all,  fourteen  portraits  from  life  of  Washington, 
and  painted  him  in  the  prime  of  his  vigour,  Stuart 
depicts  the  late  autumn  of  his  life,  when  the  fruit- 
age of  his  activity  had  been  gathered  in ;  a  face 
on  which  the  lines  of  character  are  softened ;  the 
energy  of  expression  mellowed ;  a  face  chastened 
by  responsibilities ;  infinitely  sweet  and  with  a 
tender  melancholy  of  exalted  seriousness.  It  is 
the  face  of  one  who   has  conquered   himself  as 


GILBERT  STUART  193 

well  as  others ;  it  has  the  yearning  solicitude  of 
a  father  for  his  children ;  it  represents  him  as 
indeed  the  Father  of  his  people.  The  painter 
Leslie  is  quoted  as  having  said  that  it  was 
fortunate  that  an  artist  existed  in  the  time  of 
Washington  who  could  hand  him  down  to  pos- 
terity looking  like  a  gentleman ;  and,  while  the 
remark  seems  at  first  sound  a  trifle  flippant,  there 
is  much  in  it,  after  all.  For  it  is  indeed  the 
gentle  qualities,  those  evidences  in  word  and 
deed  of  high  breeding  and  elevated  mind,  the 
prevailing  graciousness  and  lofty  seriousness  of 
the  true  gentleman,  —  that  rara  avis  among  the 
indiscriminate  flock  of  so-called  gentlemen  —  that 
must  have  been  preeminently  distinguishable  in 
Washington.  One  feels  that,  I  think,  so  sensibly 
in  visiting  Mount  Vernon  to-day. 

Set  upon  that  fine  bluff  overlooking  the  Poto- 
mac, it  has  the  dignity  of  elevation;  a  certain 
aloofness  above  the  level,  self-centred  within  its 
own  appanage  of  outbuildings,  gardens  and 
grounds,  and  yet  such  a  modest  dignity,  sug- 
gesting the  sweet  amenities,  the  little  graces 
and  quiet  refinement  of  cultured  country  life. 
Certainly  it  is  the  most  completely  interesting 
memorial  home  of  a  great  man  anywhere  to  be 
seen,  inasmuch  as  it  is  pervaded  by  the  flavour  of 
the  old  times  and  by  the  spirit  of  its  former  occu- 


194  AMERICAN   MASTERS 

pant.  And  the  whole  association  of  the  place  is 
of  the  choicest  kind  of  gentle  living.  Assuredly 
it  was  a  good  thing  that  there  should  be  an  artist 
of  the  period  who  could  record  these  qualities. 

Stuart  brought  to  the  task  a  keenly  compre- 
hending mind,  and  a  large  experience  in  the  ac- 
quaintanceship with  men  of  affairs,  of  wit  and 
learning,  and  brilliant,  varied  accomplishments. 
Himself  a  man  of  brilliant  parts,  he  had  ceased 
to  be  dazzled  by  brilliance ;  could  look  at  the 
individual  example  of  manhood  that  he  was  study- 
ing in  its  own  separate  perspective ;  could  take  in 
the  complexities  of  his  character  and  give  a  com- 
plete, instead  of  a  fragmentary,  record.  Neither 
in  his  whirl  of  success,  we  may  believe,  had  he 
lost  touch  entirely  with  the  gentle  associations 
that  surrounded  his  early  life.  There  was  much 
in  the  riot  of  those  times  to  hurt  a  sensitive 
susceptibility,  and  Stuart  so  often  refused  a  sitter, 
or  threw  up  a  commission  partly  executed,  that  it 
is  not  unreasonable  to  assume  that  such  acts  were 
due  in  some  measure,  at  least,  to  a  certain  preciosity 
in  his  own  feelings.  Certainly  no  other  man  of 
his  time  could  have  presented  this  fine  side  of 
Washington.  West  would  have  given  a  gran- 
diloquent rendering  of  the  hero ;  if  not  bom- 
bastic, probably  theatrical ;  whereas  it  is  the 
reticence  of  Stuart's  portraits  that  is  so  admirable. 


GILBERT   STUART  195 

"  I  copy  the  works  of  God,"  he  said,  "  and  leave 
clothes  to  tailors  and  mantua  makers."  Without 
admitting  the  general  desirableness  of  such  a 
painter  theory,  we  may  acknowledge  its  value 
when  tested  on  such  a  subject  as  Washington. 
We  are  glad  to  be  free  of  the  curtains  and 
columns  and  all  the  other  stock  paraphernalia  of 
the  painter  of  the  period,  and  to  be  left  in  un- 
interrupted possession  of  the  man  and  nothing 
but  the  man. 

Such  reserve  on  Stuart's  part  is  the  measure  of 
his  ranking  as  an  artist.  He  worked,  as  he  said 
himself,  to  express  sentiment,  grace,  and  character. 
In  Washington  he  found  all  three ;  with  many  of 
his  sitters  he  was  less  fortunate.  Consequently,  he 
is  not  a  painter  of  great  pictures,  but  of  some  great 
portraits.  Yet  the  limitation  is  in  a  way  an  evi- 
dence of  greatness.  It  was  the  fashion  of  his 
time  to  try  and  paint  great  pictures.  From  this 
he  had  the  hardihood  to  separate  himself,  reach- 
ing with  a  true  originality  of  feeling  after  what 
really  interested  him,  the  big  essentials  in  the 
subjects  that  he  studied.  Thus  he  put  himself 
in  line  with  the  great  painters,  shaking  himself 
free  of  the  fads  and  nostrums  of  his  time,  and 
betaking  himself  straight  to  nature.  In  the  story 
of  American  art  he  holds  a  unique  and  dignified 
position. 


The  Country  Life  Press 
Garden  City,  N.  Y. 


// 


UCLA-Art  Library 

■  ND  236  Cl1a  1913 
(III  I II  III  wwiimi 
"  "n  III  III  \H\uW\ 
L  006  225  409  9 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  194  607    6 


